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A mixture of innate talents and supportive relationships resulted in achievement and resiliency. Social learning theory suggests that resiliency, and the ability to turn negatives into positives, such as Angelou's use of her difficult life as a source for literary autobiography and poetry, is not biologically based, but depends upon being exposed to social opportunities and the willingness of others to develop the subject's natural gifts.
But this ability to 'mine' her life's challenges may itself be partially due to a biological stress response that is more productive for individuals such as Angelou than other individuals. Resilience does not so much imply an invulnerability to stress, but rather an ability to recover from negative events: "Considerable data exists suggesting that young people functioning well under high stress often show higher levels of emotional distress compared to their low stress peers" (Olsson et al. 2003, p.3). In other words, a natural invulnerability to stress is not characteristic of resiliency so much as being able to function well under high stress levels.
Biological predispositions to positive stress conditions and social receptivity to positive influences can both explain Angelou's resilience. On one hand, had Angelou not received any exposure to the arts, literature,...
However Angelou also seems to have had a certain level of adaptivity that predisposed her to recover from an early life of abuse and a lack of emotional support. Thus biologically-based theories of stress response and social constructivist theories of social learning and adaptivity should not be viewed in isolation, but as complementary forces in interpreting Angelou's improbable rise to success.
References
Ewart, Craig K., Randall S. Jorgensen, Edith Chen, Sonia Suchday, & Karen a. Matthews.
(2002). Measuring stress resilience and coping in vulnerable youth: The social competence interview. Psychological Assessment, 14 (3), 339 -- 352. Retrieved May 9,
2010 at http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~healthpsych/EdithArticles/PA2002.pdf
Maya Angelou: Biography. Biography.com. Retrieved May 9, 2010 at http://www.biography.com/articles/Maya-Angelou-9185388?print
Retrieved May 9, 2010 at http://cust.educ.ubc.ca/wstudents/TSED/Students03/SKungel/article2resiliency.pdf
Maya Angelou attained international fame in 1969 with the publication of her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; however, the seeds of her acclaim were planted long before. Raised primarily by her grandmother in Arkansas, Maya attributed her first important lessons to the woman she affectionately calls "Momma." With those lessons and other hard-earned knowledge, Maya progressed from being a victim of racism and sexual brutality with
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Angelou understands that part of her role is to be a leader (which encompasses more than the idea of "role model" although it certainly parallels it in many ways this idea) by asking others to be attentive to language. For example, in an interview for the Paris Review, she said: When I'm writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we're capable of, how we
Maya Angelou is one of the most renowned and influential voices in the recent time. She is a celebrated poet, novelist, actor and filmmaker. In her early life, she experienced the brutality of racial discrimination based on the situation at the time (Goodman 21). Her experiences in life had an influence in her work as she touched on the issues of racism and sexism over the years. Her poems, in
Maya Angelou and Jay Gatsby The two works of art are similar in many aspects though they also hold quite a number of differences when it comes to the characters and the themes covered in the works. Maya Angelou's work is more of an autobiography since it tells of the life experience of the character called Marguerite's also called "My" or "Maya" and the challenges that she undergoes. This character is highly
/ Weakened by my soulful cries." (Angelou, 7) Thus, the overall message of the poem is not very different from that of the first text, Phenomenal Woman. Again, the writer celebrates her own self as an emblematic image of the entire people. Pride and self-esteem are the major ingredients in the writer's cogent and powerful discourse. She declares her haughtiness and the pleasure she takes in her own self, suggesting