Action and Identity: A Critical Analysis of "Woman Work" by Maya Angelou Anonymous 12th Grade

Maya Angelou was an acclaimed writer and civil rights activist who reached a broad audience through her works. While she is perhaps best known for her autobiographical prose, her poetry has changed the landscape of feminist writing, bringing in a new idea of the celebration of self-definition and selfhood as an integral part of the attainment of liberation and agency.

Her poem Woman Work delineates the life of a woman as being akin to that of a slave. While idea is latent in most of the poem, her conception becomes quite overt with the mention of picking cotton. Part of the poem reads like a list with a breathless pace, an indication of the tedious life of a woman. The rhyme scheme is not regular, but exists in part of the poem to further accelerate the rhythm of the poem. This pace of the poem is representative of the life of a woman, with the woman having no time to stop; the list of her works seems to go on and on. In the following lines, this idea is especially prominent.

I've got the children to tend
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fry
The baby to dry
I got company to feed
The garden to weed
I've got shirts to press
The tots to dress
The can to be cut
I gotta clean up this hut
Then see about...