Angelou Response

In Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Angelou evokes several emotions from her readers by using beautiful poetic imagery and conversational dialogue. I feel that there is not one scene that doesn't make the reader utilize every one of their five senses. The following is a writing exercise of mine trying to imitate Angelou, by describing a childhood memory of mine primarily using senses to tell (show) the story.

Mama's in the Kitchen

My mother has been a single mom ever since I can remember. My parents were divorced since I was the age of two. I am the youngest of six children so I do not remember the yelling, crying behind closed doors or accusations of another women as my older siblings do. I thought that it was normal to only have a mom in the house until I began kindergarten.
My mom worked several jobs to support her large family, but the jobs turned into one career which was nursing. My mother would work nights so that she could make us dinner and be back when we all woke up in the morning. She would try her hardest to play working mom and housewife mom by always having at least our dinners being homemade. It was a treat when breakfast was something besides cold cereal during the summer and cracked wheat during the winter.

One early morning I woke up long before the sun was to come out and I heard some rustling in the kitchen. I decided to play detective and find out what the noise was. My mother eyed me from the door way.

"Les Mess, what are you doing up so early?"

"I couldn't sleep." I yawned.

I walked over to the kitchen table t0 where my mom was making flour clouds with every toss of flour from it's container onto the table.

"What are you doing mom?"

"I'm making cinnamon rolls for breakfast, but only good little girls that go to sleep get to enjoy them."

"I want to help you though."

With that my mom put me to work by spreading melted butter, sweet sugar and cinnamon all over the pastry dough. Then she rolled the dough up like a long snake. She began cutting the snake into small parts by wrapping tread around the dough and pulling tight. That was my favorite part. That and having my mother's attention all to myself. I will never forget that memory as long as I live.

Ok so as you can read I am definitely no Angelou, and I definitely did not use all of the senses. I mean I did in real life but it did not transfer to the page. Granted this was just a freelance writing experience, but I know I could do a lot better. I feel that I can access memories pretty easy, which is probably why I am getting my master's in Creative Nonfiction, but actually inhabiting the memory is definitely more difficult. My writing would improve by leaps and bounds once I got that down.

As for Angelou's memoir I definitely feel that the larger themes of racial segregation and women's liberation are still very relevant today. Both of those issues still have a very long way to go until they are no longer issues. Her story is timeless even though it is set during a specific time because of themes that go through time such as unconditional love, respect and most importantly in my eyes forgiveness. Forgiveness for oneself. I believe Maya's character is so compelling because it shows the "American" plight or "American Dream" if you will. I hate saying it that way. Angelou had to fight against the odds of childhood rape, racism, being a woman and blaming herself for her rapist's murder. She conquered all of these things. She is a survivor.

I love Momma's character. She reminded me so much of my own grandmother. This book was beautifully written. One day I wish to write a 10th as good as Angelou.