Maya Angelou, a modern writer, poet, activist, playwright, former prostitute, madam, dancer, stage and screen producer, director, performer, and song writer who focuses on personal experience in poetry, changed women's roles through her voice, poetry, and troubled past. "I try to live my life as a poetic adventure, everything is part of a large canvas I am creating, I am living beneath (Litz 1)." Admitting that she sometimes "hates words" and that she "doesn't adore the writer's discipline", but it's all what composes her writer's workday (Williams 31). Although a prominent poet today, she spent much of her troubled youth fleeing various family problems. She grew up homeless for a time, worked on and off as a prostitute, and held a variety of jobs in several places as a young adult (Napierkowski 275). Maya came up the hard way with pain and hope, while raised by her Grandma after her parents divorce, raped as a child, had a baby at age 16 out of wedlock, and by age 30 was a prostitute, show girl, madam, and an actress (Unapix).
English: Maya Angelou reciting her poem, "On the P...
Arco Maya
Maya Relief of Royal Blood LettingOn April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Marguerite Johnson was born the daughter of Bailey Johnson and Vivan Baxter (Napierkowski 14). Maya has one older brother Bailey who addressed her as "My sister"; and later shortened it to "My," then extended it to "Maya" and retained permanently as her first name (Williams 14). Maya saw her Brother Bailey as her role model, always looking to him for advice (Unapix). Maya's mother Vivian is a nurse and card dealer; her father Bailey Johnson Sr. was a doorman and dietician or meal adviser for the navy. A difficult marriage that ended in divorce, and their subsequent inability to deal with young children left neither of them wanting to take care of them...