

A hero can be of any age, race, or gender, and they can impact as little of a group as one person or as big of a group as a whole nation. However, we are so focused on the assumption that heroes need to do something extraordinary that we often overlook the everyday heroes: normal, average human beings who try to untangle someone else’s life even through the knots in their own. Heroes are people who overcome their tough pasts and use them to inspire others.
The final stanza of this poem gave Maya Angelou a phrase which she subsequently made more popular, but the whole of Dunbar’s poem about sympathy is worth. He died young, of tuberculosis, aged just 33. To me, a person who has gone through hardships but is selfless enough to put one’s own needs aside and determined enough to fight for others deserves to be called a hero.But it was as a poet one of the first internationally popular African-American poets that Dunbar would achieve real fame and success.
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At school, the white children teased and discriminated against Angelou, just for being a black girl. Born to Vivian and Bailey Baxter as Marguerite Ann Johnson, Maya Angelou went through a childhood that no one should go through. Maya Angelou was an American author, poet, performer, and civil rights activist born on April 4th, 1928 in St. Free Returns 100 Satisfaction Guarantee Fast ShippingPortrait of Maya Angelou Adria Richards An individual who underwent many obstacles in her life, yet maintained her heroic qualities of selflessness and commitment, is Maya Angelou. Find great designs on baseball hats and trucker hats.

She put her longing for her mother and her ethical values aside to achieve the greater cause. Even through her challenging childhood, Angelou demonstrated selflessness by striving for the benefit of others more than striving to fulfill her own needs. Leaving a monumental legacy and inspiration to the world, Angelou passed away at the age of 86 on in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She received many different awards for her achievements, one of them being the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. On January 20, 1993, Angelou recited one of her most famous speeches, “On the Pulse of Morning,” at Bill Clinton’s Inauguration ceremony. Following this, she wrote numerous books, poems, and plays, which all illuminated common human struggles such as racism and civil rights.
Angelou demonstrated her selflessness when she was stabbed in the leg by her father’s girlfriend. It describes a man who sells his farm to a patriarch, not a farmer.In a society filled with narcissistic people, Angelou proved herself to be selfless by putting her own needs aside to achieve a greater good, which was always to bring peace an love to others. David Lee’s poem is about leaving a life few understand. It is not through the number of awards she received, but rather through her willingness to devote herself to a greater cause at the expense of her own mental health and her determination to use her leadership and position to become a voice for the less fortunate that Maya Angelou depicts the meaning of a true hero.Alicia Ostriker’s poem works as a retirement poem because it references all the necessities of life: Hard work, love and beauty, and being so filled with love that everyone knows it.
Even from a young age, Angelou considered the consequences and the effects it would have on those around her. While most other individuals would have chosen their mother over a random town of people, Angelou did the unexpected. Angelou recognized that if she acted to fulfill her own needs, she would create a serious drama within the town. I could never succeed in shielding the gash in my side… And if I failed to hide the wound, we were certain to experience another scene of violence” (Angelou 246). Therefore, although Angelou was a young teenager at the time and wanted the comfort of her mother to ease her pain, she decided to not go back to her mother: “I could go home to Mother, but I couldn’t.
One of the most important things one can do as a hero is sacrificing him- or herself and needs for the “greater good,” which should always be about bringing love to not him- or herself, but to something bigger: the cries and thirsts of others. Like a hero, Angelou risked her emotional and physical health to protect and surround her son’s life with love. Although working as a dancer at a strip club was unscrupulous and damaging to her mental and physical health, Angelou took the job because her body and her ethics did not matter to her as much as her son did. While Angelou could have easily dropped off her son at an orphanage, she never gave up on her son and selflessly put her son’s needs before hers: “As an unwed teenage mother, Angelou worked an assortment of menial jobs… When the marriage ended, Angelou supported herself and her son by dancing at a strip club in San Francisco” (Shaw 7). In addition, Angelou demonstrated selflessness while raising a son as a young mother. A hero must value the safety and well-being of others more than him or herself, enough to dismiss his or her selfish longings.
It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance” (Angelou 268). In her autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," Angelou reflected on the status that African American women held and how they were looked down upon by society: “The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste, and even belligerence. She was a poet, historian, author, actress, playwright, civil Maya Angelou with Governor Jim Martin at the North Carolina Awards, 6 November 1987 State Archives of North Carolina Additionally, because Angelou made the world aware of concepts that were frequently dismissed due to their sensitive nature, she was able to use her voice to speak for people who were not able to express their opinions in the spotlight, and became a leader. Louis, was raised in segregated rural Arkansas.
Although Angelou went through tough experiences as a child, rather than drown in her sorrows, she took her stories and transformed them into a wonderful life lesson that covers many emotional themes that still speak to the world today: “While Angelou writes of deeply personal issues, such as her childhood rape in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), her vividly expressed struggles with racism, sexuality, sexism, identity, and family speak to the rapidly changing culture of twentieth century America” (Shaw 19). Furthermore, not only did Angelou illuminate the topic of Black women, but she also illuminated numerous controversial topics. A true leader does not just stand in front of a group but elucidates the subjects that are overlooked by society. Like a hero, Angelou made a commitment to become a voice for the people who stood behind the topics, by bringing light to ignored topics. It was through this commitment of being a leader and her keen observations that she was able to step outside the box and really reflect on the true characteristics of the world. By becoming voice for the less fortunate, she lead the group out into the world and encouraged them to express their opinions to the world.
All heroes use their voice for a cause they bring light to overlooked topics in order to represent and voice the opinions of those whom the unsightly masks of racial and gender discrimination, identity crisis, and other prejudiced subjects deteriorated. As a famous writer who got a lot of attention, she committed to her role of transforming her words into universal messages that represented the people behind the subject. These themes were not merely meant to show her views but to stand for the normal people who did not have the status or the voice to influence the world.
Angelou strived to fulfill the needs of others at the cost of her own longings and herself.
