Poem Is Donald Hall\'s Letter With No Address

¶ … prolific black American writers recognized in the world of contemporary American literature is Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou was born Margurite Johnson in Arkansas, but later changed her name to Maya Angelou, after her husband's last name, a man named Tosh Angelou (Life and Times 2002). Maya Angelou had struggled through hard life and poverty, living her life in perpetual abuse to opportunist and abusive men. She had a difficult childhood, and was raped at the age of 8 by her mother's friend, and by the age 16, gave birth to her son (Quilt Pages 2002). She sustains herself and her son by working, and Maya Angelou worked on different odd jobs. She was considered the first black streetcar conductor in San Francisco, the first black woman screenwriter and director in Hollywood, and became known for her work for the civil rights movement along with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. (ClassicNotes 2002).

Maya Angelou had led a life of eternal struggle and suffering, yet, her suffering did not become a barrier for her to pursue a meaningful and fruitful life as a writer and activist of women's and black American's rights. Of the numerous poems she had composed, the poem "Africa" is a soulful reflection of herself, and the poem is an analogy of her life with that of the great continent of the world. This paper will provide a critical analysis of the poem 'Africa" by Maya Angelou, and will relate this poem analysis in the context of her life and experiences as a woman and black American in the white American society.

The first stanza of the poem "Africa" is descriptive of the qualities of a woman and of the continent Africa. The stanza can be viewed as having dual meaning, and the analogy of Africa and herself 9 Maya Angelou) starts at the first lines of the poem. The lines "sugarcane sweet / deserts her hair / golden her feet / two Niles her tears..." (lines 2-6, I) are descriptive phrases of the qualities the subject possesses (Africa and Maya Angelou). Notice that the firs three lines mentioned attributes to the exotic quality of the subject; however, the last line illustrates that despite the beauty that we see in those lines in the first stanza, there is suffering beneath that feeling of beauty ("two Niles her tears"). The second stanza, meanwhile, is the development of Africa's life: along with the suffering she experiences (rime whit and cold / brigand ungentled/icicle bold") from the start of her narrative, the subject is also in deep pain from being tormented with the thought that she's being separated with her dear children. In the second stanza, Angelou primarily talks about Africa's history, wherein families are broken because of the j=numerous wars and strife the continent had involved itself with for the past years. The lines "churched her with Jesus/bled her with guns" (lines 7-8, II) is symbolic for two major events that resulted from the colonization of Africa to Western nations. "Churched her with Jesus" meant the implementation of Christianity in Africa by their conquerors (the Westerners), while "bled her with guns" meant the bloody wars Africa had in protest to the colonialism of the Western nations. Here in the second stanza, Angelou takes us into a brief tour of Africa's history as a nation. The last stanza talks about the positive development of Africa in the poem. Again, we are reminded of Angelou here, who managed to be successful despite the sufferings she had gone through her life. Positive outlook in life ("Now she is rising") is apparent in the last stanza, but Angelou also tells us never to forget one's suffering ("remember her pain/remember the losses/her screams loud and vain") (lines 2-4, III), for these sufferings are the primary 'driving force' that helps an individual be on his/her feet again after a downfall. Again, Angelou speaks for herself and Africa here, especially in the last four lines of the last stanza.