Looping the Loop in Maya Angelou’s Gather Together in My Name

Authors

  • Louis Mendy Senior Lecturer at Cheikh Anta Diop University, Dakar.

Abstract

Maya Angelou’s Autobiography, Gather Together in My Name, is Rita’s moving story between the ages of seventeen and nineteen. During those two or three years, the young Maya experiences horrors of life in the racist American society in the period immediately following the Second World War as well in the 1950s and 1960s.

Rita gives birth to a son at seventeen in those hectic years, and is obliged to face difficulties when she is on her own and is moving from one menial job to another. Thus, she loses her childhood innocence and enters the world of adults by trying to find a man for the pleasure of sex or marriage and also for her own security and her son’s. Unfortunately, Rita is not lucky with men’s love. She runs a whorehouse as a madam before being led herself into the world of prostitution by her sugar daddy: the forty-five year-old L.D.Toolbrook.

Rita finally meets Troubadour who convinces her not to jeopardize her life with narcotics and to believe in her ability to have a much better future for her and her son. Maya then realizes that the world of adulthood is not for her yet. She makes the promise to Troubadour and resumes the innocent life of a teen-ager besides her mother.

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Published

2018-01-27

How to Cite

Mendy, L. (2018). Looping the Loop in Maya Angelou’s Gather Together in My Name. Academy of Social Science Journal, 3(1), 1103–1108. Retrieved from http://innovativejournal.in/index.php/assj/article/view/1998

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Articles