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Graduation
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42 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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About the author
Maya Angelou
293 books14.5k followersMaya Angelou was an American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years. She received dozens of awards and more than 50 honorary degrees. Angelou's series of seven autobiographies focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her life up to the age of 17 and brought her international recognition and acclaim.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, family, and travel.
She became a poet and writer after a string of odd jobs during her young adulthood. These included fry cook, sex worker, nightclub performer, Porgy and Bess cast member, Southern Christian Leadership Conference coordinator, and correspondent in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. Angelou was also an actress, writer, director, and producer of plays, movies, and public television programs. In 1982, she was named the first Reynolds Professor of American Studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Angelou was active in the Civil Rights Movement and worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. Beginning in the 1990s, she made approximately 80 appearances a year on the lecture circuit, something she continued into her eighties. In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961.
With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for Black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of Black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S. libraries. Angelou's most celebrated works have been labeled as autobiographical fiction, but many critics consider them to be autobiographies. She made a deliberate attempt to challenge the common structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her books center on themes that include racism, identity, family, and travel.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
April 26, 2019
Graduation is a chapter from Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969). Maya Angelou was an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She became a poet and writer after a series of occupations as a young adult, including fry cook, sex worker, nightclub dancer and performer, coordinator for the SCLC, and journalist in Egypt and Ghana during the decolonization of Africa. With the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her work has been considered a defense of black culture. In the 1950-60s, b lack female writers were marginalized to the point that they were unable to present themselves as central characters in the literature they wrote. Maya Angelou changed that.
It is very hard for me to review Graduation because it is only one chapter - from a book that I actually haven't read (yet). Nonetheless, I will try my best. As usually the case with most graduation tales, this account focuses on growing up. With greater intensity than ever before, the narrator of the story is confronted with the fact that she is black. A surprising twist to the graduation ceremony helps her see what that fact means to her. Graduation deals with the conflict, both external and internal, that black boys and girls face when they grow up in a white America.
When speaking of her writing, Maya has said, 'I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.' I really like the effort that Maya puts into her work in showing that black people are actually people, human beings with desires, fears and dreams. This might seem very obvious to us right now in the 21st century, but when Maya was trying to make her case back in the 1960s these facts hadn't gotten through to the majority of the white population.
The chapter starts out quite happily. Our protagonist is very excited that she's about to graduate, because graduating classes were the nobility. Even teachers were respectful towards the graduates, and tended to speak to them, if not as equals, as beings only slightly lower than themselves. However, the reader can sense a sort of underlying tension, or rather tragedy. Due to the fact that this story takes place in 1940, 'separate but equal' was the legal doctrine in the United States and so segregated schools were in full swing. According to this ruling, racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868, which guaranteed equal protection under the law to all citizens. Let me redefine the US for you: Not a democracy, but a fucking hypocrisy.
And so you as a reader know, before the protagonist comes to realize this, that there is no place for her, as a woman of color, in this country. I am always amazed about how in tune black thought was at the time, because last month I read a whole lot on the Civil Rights Movement and its preceding years, and every black activist and writer had very similar things to say, and so e.g. Baldwin says:
Angelou shows in a very vivid way the change in the consciousness of her protagonist. As I said before, in the beginning she is excited. She thinks the world's her oyster. After waking up on graduation day she hopes that she'll never forget this day, because she's sure it will be awesome. But then when she is actually seated at the graduation hall, she realizes that the usual assembly pattern is not followed. They are denied their Negro National Anthem. It isn't played that day, and our protagonist is overcome with a presentiment of worse things to come.
And the worse things do come – two white men come through the door off-stage, and one starts addressing the hall of black graduates and their families: The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, whereas the black boys (no mention of black girls whatsoever... because what could one expect of them, right?) could try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises. Angelou says that there is nothing wrong with those sportsmen, but what white school official had the right to decide that those two men should be their only heroes?
And so finally the message of the white speaker settles in our protagonist – if her brother wanted to become a lawyer he had to first pay penance for his skin by picking cotton and hoeing corn and studying correspondence books at night for twenty years. Their accomplishments were nothing. The white man would not allow them to become great, to become who they truly are.
However, Henry finds the right words in this moment, despite just being an 8th-grader himself, he finds the words to console his black brothers and sisters, and to give them strength. He closes his speech by singing the Negro Anthem.
Upon revisiting this chapter for my review, I grew incredibly fond of it. I think it is a very strong chapter with a very strong message. It definitely makes me wanna pick up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The only shortfall of this chapter were the characters because they were extremely hard to connect to (will probably be cured when reading the whole book and being in Angelou's head for a longer period of time), and the fact that some of it felt a little cliche. I am not saying that Angelou is lying. I'm pretty sure that these things happened to her, or to some unfortunate child out there, but her language had a pathos at times that really didn't fit the narrative of a 14-year-old. Apart from that, pretty decent stuff!
It is very hard for me to review Graduation because it is only one chapter - from a book that I actually haven't read (yet). Nonetheless, I will try my best. As usually the case with most graduation tales, this account focuses on growing up. With greater intensity than ever before, the narrator of the story is confronted with the fact that she is black. A surprising twist to the graduation ceremony helps her see what that fact means to her. Graduation deals with the conflict, both external and internal, that black boys and girls face when they grow up in a white America.
When speaking of her writing, Maya has said, 'I speak to the black experience, but I am always talking about the human condition.' I really like the effort that Maya puts into her work in showing that black people are actually people, human beings with desires, fears and dreams. This might seem very obvious to us right now in the 21st century, but when Maya was trying to make her case back in the 1960s these facts hadn't gotten through to the majority of the white population.
The chapter starts out quite happily. Our protagonist is very excited that she's about to graduate, because graduating classes were the nobility. Even teachers were respectful towards the graduates, and tended to speak to them, if not as equals, as beings only slightly lower than themselves. However, the reader can sense a sort of underlying tension, or rather tragedy. Due to the fact that this story takes place in 1940, 'separate but equal' was the legal doctrine in the United States and so segregated schools were in full swing. According to this ruling, racial segregation did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, adopted in 1868, which guaranteed equal protection under the law to all citizens. Let me redefine the US for you: Not a democracy, but a fucking hypocrisy.
And so you as a reader know, before the protagonist comes to realize this, that there is no place for her, as a woman of color, in this country. I am always amazed about how in tune black thought was at the time, because last month I read a whole lot on the Civil Rights Movement and its preceding years, and every black activist and writer had very similar things to say, and so e.g. Baldwin says:
The question you got to ask yourself ... the white population of this country's got to ask itself is, 'why it was necessary to have a nigger in the first place?'And this sentiment is heavily mimicked in Angelou's memoir. Where does the nigger fit in? It is clear that there is no negro-problem, no, the problem lies in the fact that white people have been putting down black people for centuries in order to uplift themselves. The negro doesn't have to change... so you can guess, who has to instead!
Because I'm not a nigger. I am a man. But if you think I'm a nigger, it means you need it and you got to find out why. And the future of the country depends on that.
Angelou shows in a very vivid way the change in the consciousness of her protagonist. As I said before, in the beginning she is excited. She thinks the world's her oyster. After waking up on graduation day she hopes that she'll never forget this day, because she's sure it will be awesome. But then when she is actually seated at the graduation hall, she realizes that the usual assembly pattern is not followed. They are denied their Negro National Anthem. It isn't played that day, and our protagonist is overcome with a presentiment of worse things to come.
And the worse things do come – two white men come through the door off-stage, and one starts addressing the hall of black graduates and their families: The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, whereas the black boys (no mention of black girls whatsoever... because what could one expect of them, right?) could try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises. Angelou says that there is nothing wrong with those sportsmen, but what white school official had the right to decide that those two men should be their only heroes?
And so finally the message of the white speaker settles in our protagonist – if her brother wanted to become a lawyer he had to first pay penance for his skin by picking cotton and hoeing corn and studying correspondence books at night for twenty years. Their accomplishments were nothing. The white man would not allow them to become great, to become who they truly are.
It was awful to be a Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense.After the white man finished his speech and left the hall, a gloomy, heavy spirit lies upon the black listeners. Henry Reed, our protagonist's classmate, was up next to give his valedictory adress, entitled 'To Be or Not to Be?'. Our protagonist is furious, asking herself wether Henry hadn't heard the whitefolks. The negro couldn't be, so the question was a waste of time.
However, Henry finds the right words in this moment, despite just being an 8th-grader himself, he finds the words to console his black brothers and sisters, and to give them strength. He closes his speech by singing the Negro Anthem.
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,And all of a sudden, our protagonist can feel it as well. They were on top again. As always, again. They survived. And in that moment she felt proud – proud to be a memeber of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race. Freedom beings with the pride in the heart.
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered.
Upon revisiting this chapter for my review, I grew incredibly fond of it. I think it is a very strong chapter with a very strong message. It definitely makes me wanna pick up I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The only shortfall of this chapter were the characters because they were extremely hard to connect to (will probably be cured when reading the whole book and being in Angelou's head for a longer period of time), and the fact that some of it felt a little cliche. I am not saying that Angelou is lying. I'm pretty sure that these things happened to her, or to some unfortunate child out there, but her language had a pathos at times that really didn't fit the narrative of a 14-year-old. Apart from that, pretty decent stuff!
June 28, 2021
Such an eye opening book
January 14, 2022
this made me think hard about how i’m going to sing lift ev’ry voice today. a must read.
August 28, 2024
I love my Freshman Writing Seminar RAHHHHH
January 12, 2014
This was a short but very insightful story.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews