Maya Angelou
...boyfriend (“Maya”). This certain experience and her whole experience of moving back and forth between her mother and grandmother caused her to struggle with maturity. “She became determined to prove she was a woman and began to rush toward maturity. Angelou soon found herself pregnant, and at the age of sixteen she gave birth to her son, Guy” (“Maya”). Her son proved to be the highlight of her life and finally allowed Maya to realize what she had been missing in her life. Since then she had risen above all her obstacles and worked toward a new promising life. Despite the difficult situations Maya faced during her life, she did manage to get an educational background and set forth her various careers. “Maya attended public schools in Arkansas and California, then, when she moved to San Francisco at the age of 16, Maya became San Francisco’s first female streetcar conductor” (“She-Roe”). Later, she studied dance with Martha Graham and drama with Frank Silvera, and then went to on to a career in theater. During the mid 1960’s, she became assistant administrator of the School of Music and Drama at the University of Ghana. “She was the feature editor of the African Review in Accra from 1964 to 1966. She returned to the United States, and worked as a writer-producer for the 20th Century- Fox Television” (“She-Roe”). “In 1974, Maya was appointed by Gerald Ford to the Bicentennial Commission and later by Jimmy Carter to the Commission for International Woman of the Year. She accepted a lifetime appointment in 1981 as Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina” (“Maya”). Maya also got to work in Hollywood and became the first black female director. She had managed to produce various prize winning documentaries and received special awards such as The Golden Eagle Award and the Tony Award (“Maya”). Maya worked hard to achieve her successes and in the end she managed to be a very competent individual. Moreover, Maya’s life experiences and the Civil Rights movement taking place at the time had extreme influence on her literary works and on her screen productio...