Essay Questions

Maya Angelou is an expression of true motherhood in her work, The Heart of a Woman. Is this assertion correct?

In this work, Angelou gives a lot of emphasis on ensuring that her son grows into a mature and respectable individual in society. In so doing, Angelou brings to light the certain challenges and responsibilities that she is tasked with as a mother to her son. To ensure the wellbeing of her son, Angelou makes changes in her life as well as that of her son, including moving to New York City where she becomes indulged in the fight for women's rights for her son's sake. Throughout her life, she expresses such aspects as determination, dignity, strength as an example for her son. Even after she gets married, she retains the motherhood role as her primary concern. In this case, Maya Angelou is indeed an expression of motherhood.

The role of the woman as a leader is explicit in Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman. Show how this aspect is brought out.

Maya Angelou is a force to reckon with, as presented in her memoir, which is basically an analysis of her life. She is a role model and an epitome of female leadership. After she moves to New York, Angelou engages with influential people in social circles. When she expresses her interest in pursuing writing as a career to James Baldwin, he becomes her mentor. She gains more power and influence since she is setting and breaking new ground for the other females in her generation and setting an example as a woman leader through handling herself with the utmost sense of responsibility. In this sense, Angelou can be regarded as an explicit representation of the woman as a leader.

Explain the meaning of the title of the memoir.

The memoir is entitled “The Heart of a Woman” and from the beginning, it makes it clear that the main purpose of this book is to describe experiences that are uniquely experienced by women. Among these, the two most important ones are motherhood and marriage. Motherhood is described here as being challenging and hard at times, an experience that takes a lot of time and effort. Marriage is described in predominantly negative ways, as an institution which has the purpose of oppressing women and making sure they never achieve anything of great importance in life. Because of this, it is no wonder to see that the author reaches true happiness only at the moment when her son goes out to college and she divorces her second husband.

Why is the song “Strange Fruit,” as mentioned in the memoir, an important element here?

The song mentioned above was released at the beginning o the civil rights movement and has the purpose of describing some of the horrors black men and women had to deal with, the most important one being described here being lynching. The song was inspired by the lynching of two black men which took place in August 1930. The two men were taken from their jail cells and a large mob aided by the local police then beat them and eventually hanged them. This event served as the inspiration for the song and the main purpose of the song is to condemn this event and the cruelty of the act of lynching.

What was an anti-apartheid fighter?

In 1961, the author marries a man named Make who is an anti-apartheid fighter from South Africa. The term is used here to refer to someone who fought against racism in Africa and against the idea that black people are inferior and should submit to the will of the white men ruling over them. This difference between the white minority and the black majority was born during the time when most countries in Africa were under the rule of various countries and Empires from Europe. The rulers of these countries tried to keep the black population under control by putting white people in power and claiming that black people were inferior. Laws that promoted racism were given and for decades the black population was at the bottom of the food chain. This situation began to change towards the middle of the 20th century when a large group of black men and women tried to fight against the system. The purpose of their efforts was to try and take back control over their country and to ensure their survival.