Human Family
Choices – Unit 1 -10th grade
I note the obvious differences
in the human family.
Some of us are serious,
some thrive on comedy.
Some declare their lives are lived
as true profundity,
and others claim they really live
the real reality.
The variety of our skin tones
can confuse, bemuse, delight,
brown and pink and beige and purple,
tan and blue and white.
I've sailed upon the seven seas
and stopped in every land.
I've seen the wonders of the world,
Glossary:
1. thrive(v) - here live (flourish)
2. profundity (n) – depth, wisdom
3. bemuse (v) - confuse
4. jibe (v) - ‫ ִהקְ נִ יט‬,‫ עָ קַ ץ‬,‫לִ גְ לֵג‬
5. moor (n) - grassland
not yet one common man.
I know ten thousand women
called Jane and Mary Jane,
but I've not seen any two
who really were the same.
Mirror twins are different
although their features jibe,
and lovers think quite different thoughts
while lying side by side.
We love and lose in China,
we weep on England's moors,
and laugh and moan in Guinea,
and thrive on Spanish shores.
We seek success in Finland,
are born and die in Maine.
In minor ways we differ,
in major we're the same.
I note the obvious differences
between each sort and type,
but we are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
We are more alike, my friends,
than we are unalike.
~~by Maya Angelou~~
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Maya Angelou
(b. 1928)
http://www.virtualology.com/virtualmuseumofhistory/hallofwomen/MAYAANG
ELOU.NET/
Born on April 4, 1928 in Saint Louis, Missouri, Marguerite Johnson adopted the
name Maya Angelou in her twenties when she performed as a dancer at the
Purple Onion cabaret. Her father, Bailey Johnson, was a navy dietician, and her
mother was Vivian Johnson. She has one brother, Bailey, and when her parents
divorced when she was three years, they went to live with their grandmother in
Stamps, Arkansas. She loved her grandmother whom she called, "momma, had
a deep-brooding love that hung over everything she touched." Growing up in
Stamps, in the Deep South, Maya learned what it was like to grow up in a white
controlled world. She wore hand me down clothes from white women, and was
refused to be seen by a white dentist. She always dreamed that her "nappy black
hair" would be transformed into long, flowing blond locks because she thought
being a white girl would be so much better. Her grandmother instilled a strong
value for religion while they lived with her.
After five years with their grandmother, Maya's mother asked that they return
to St. Louis to live with her. Unfortunately, her mother's boyfriend raped her,
and as a result she did not talk at all for five years. Her mother did not know
what to do so she sent her back to her grandmother. With the nurturing help of
Mrs. Flowers, Maya eventually grew more confident and self-assured.
Again she and her brother went to live with her mother who was now living in
San Francisco. Her mother's home seemed to be in constant upheaval so she
eventually went to live with her father and his girlfriend in a ramshackle
trailer. Maya found life to be no more stable there so she finally found a place to
stay in a car graveyard where other homeless children lived. She had trouble
maturing into an adult due to the lack of stable role models and the constantly
changing environments. At sixteen she found herself pregnant with a son, Guy.
Due to her transcient lifestyle, Maya experienced various jobs from working as a
Creole cook, a streetcar conductor, a cocktail waitress, a dancer, and a madam
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to later emerging as a singer, actress, playwright, an editor, a lecturer and civil
rights activist and a successful writer. Her volumes include five volumes of
poetry and twelve books. At Bill Clinton's inauguration she read one of her
poems "On the Pulse of Morning"as the second person to read her own works at
a Presidential Inauguration.
Much of her early life is recorded in her first book, I Know Why The Caged Bird
Sings which is a wonderful story of transcendence from circumstances. Sidonie
Ann Smith describes Angelou's writing, "like Richard Wright, she opens with a
primal childhood scene that brings into focus the nature of the imprisoning
environment from which the self will seek escape". Another reader, Doris
Grumbach says of her writing in her second book, Gather Together In My Name,
"it is apparent that Angelou is keen, sharp, earthy, imaginative, lyrical,
spiritually bold, and seems destined for distinction".
Since 1981 Dr. Angelou has been residing at Wake Forest University as the first
Reynolds Professor of American Studies, a lifetime appointment.
by Jane Harter
She became the first poet to appear at a presidential inauguration since Robert Frost was
invited to do so by John F. Kennedy in 1960. She says that before reciting the poem, directly
after Clinton's inaugural speech, 'I tried not to realise where I was. I tried to suspend myself. I
was afraid I might lose my composure.' (On the Pulse of Morning)
Her books are transforming. Like her contemporaries Toni Morrison, Rosa Guy and Alice
Walker, she has written about the particular experience of black oppression and made it
universal. She speaks straight from the heart ('heart' is a word she uses often). She has a
lyricism learnt from black preachers, a way of making language sing.
Questions to the poem:
1. The author mentions several differences (stanzas 1-8)
between people. What are they?
2. What general differences does she talk about?
Name them according to stanzas:
e.g. stanza # 3
- difference in the color of skin
stanza # ____
- ___________ (difference in . . .)
3. a. What traits does she talk about in stanzas 7-8?
b. Who are "we"?
4. What conclusion does the author come to?
5. How is this connected with the topic studied in Unit 1?