Blog Post 5

        Maya Angelou was an American poet, singer, memoirist, and civil rights activist; she published seven autobiographies, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of plays, movies, and television shows spanning over 50 years, but she is best known for her seven autobiographies. I would describe Maya Angelou’s approach to storytelling as using her voice to give a voice to others, and help others through her words. Nancy Schwartz writes in “Storytelling Secret Sauce—Via Maya Angelou” that unlike many other writers Angelou made herself “accessible and relevant to all” Schwartz continues to say Angelou has done this by “shaping her writing around the same sensations and feelings each one of us experiences, bridging the gap between her life and point of view, and ours”. Angelou used her storytelling as a way to connect people and show people that we all are more alike than we think and go through very similar experiences, Angelou tried to get this point across by saying “Human beings should understand how other humans feel no matter where they are, no matter what their language or culture is, no matter their age, and no matter the age in which they live. If you develop the art of seeing us as more alike than we are unalike, then all stories are understandable.”

Maya Angelou

One important feminist work by Maya Angelou is her poem “ Phenomenal Woman”, this work is a women empowering piece. In the poem Angelou says she is “not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size”  which is a powerful statement and I think is one of the most important lines in this poem because it lets women know that she is a phenomenal woman without being a fashion model size. There is not much of a reminder in media that women do not have to be model size to be ‘perfect’ or in this case ‘phenomenal’ so it is important to remind women and especially young girls that it is normal to not be model size. Body image and self love is a huge issue for women and girls especially when going through the transition into womanhood, as Jean Kilbourne talks about in “Cutting Girls Down to Size” she says “when a girl enters adolescence, she faces a series of losses— loss of self-confidence, loss of a sense of efficiency and ambition, and the loss of her “voice”, the sense of being a unique and powerful self that she had in childhood” (Kilbourne, 129). I think Angelou is trying to give women back those losses by listing the many things that make her a phenomenal woman and can make them one too, such as “The stride of my step”, “It’s the fire in my eyes”, “The grace of my style”. 

"Phenomenal Woman" by Maya Angelou

I believe the importance of this work and Maya Angelou’s story in this work is to speak her own truth and let others understand and relate to it as they need, because as she said we are all more alike than we think. Audre Lorde in “Poetry is Not a Luxury” says “Our poems formulate the implications of ourselves, what we feel within and dare make real (or bring action into accordance with), our fears, our hopes, our most cherished terrors.” (Lorde, 373); in my opinion I think Maya Angelou encompassed that, her poem was what she felt within and dared to make real and probably in hopes to empower other women to be there own phenomenal woman.

Works Cited

-Kilbourne, J. (1999). Cutting Girls Down to Size. In Deadly Persuasion: Why Women And Girls Must Fight The Addictive Power Of Advertising (p. 129).

-Lorde, A. Poetry is Not a Luxury (p. 373)

-Schwartz, N. Storytelling Secret Sauce-Via Maya Angelou. Retrieved from https://gettingattention.org/blog/nonprofit-storytelling-maya-angelou/