88 pages • 2 hours read
Maya AngelouA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The memoir opens with a young Maya reciting a poem during the Easter service at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. She can't remember more than the first few lines, and instead of conjuring up the rest of the poem, she thinks of the dress she is wearing. As her grandmother was sewing it for her, Maya had hoped that it would transform her and make her look like “one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right with the world” (2). But when Easter morning came, Maya realized that the dress was merely “a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway” (2). Wearing it, Maya feels deeply self-conscious and has an impression that everyone's gaze is fixed on her skinny legs. Nevertheless, she believes that one day she will wake up from this “Black ugly dream” (2) and appear as her true self, beautiful and blond. Then Maya thinks that this sudden transformation will make everyone understand why she avoided acquiring a Southern accent and using the common slang. In Maya’s eyes, she was “really white” (2), and it was her cruel fairy stepmother who turned her into a big Black girl.
By Maya Angelou
A Brave And Startling Truth
Maya Angelou
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
Maya Angelou
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
Maya Angelou
Caged Bird
Maya Angelou
Gather Together in My Name
Maya Angelou
Letter to My Daughter
Maya Angelou
Mom & Me & Mom
Maya Angelou
Mother, A Cradle to Hold Me
Maya Angelou
On the Pulse of Morning
Maya Angelou
Phenomenal Woman
Maya Angelou
Still I Rise
Maya Angelou
The Heart of a Woman
Maya Angelou
The Lesson
Maya Angelou
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