A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Woman Work"
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A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Woman Work" - Gale
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Woman Work
Maya Angelou
1978
Introduction
By the time Maya Angelou wrote Woman Work
in 1978, she had already published three volumes of prose in addition to two previous collections of poetry. It is for her prose that she is most highly praised but her poetry—and Woman Work
in particular—explores themes such as exploitation and self-identity in an intimate and immediate way that cannot be achieved in prose. Poetry is by its nature more personal and in most cases, relies heavily upon the meaning and value of every single word. Feelings, nuances, and emotions must be inferred or explained in a more economical format, making every word matter.
Angelou's identity as an African American, a woman, and an African American woman influences much of her poetry. This is true of all the poems included in the collection And Still I Rise (republished in 2001 as Still I Rise). The theme of self-identity in Woman Work,
is especially interesting because the poem allows for two related but differing interpretations. Using imagery and rhythm, Angelou provides the reader with details of her speaker's workaday world, a world in which every day is like the last, and relief is found only in communing with nature. Angelou's masterful manipulation of words presents two possible scenarios: the narrator is a slave or she is representative of any woman whose daily life is dedicated to caring for others.
Woman Work
was published in a decade when poetry was more mainstream than it is in the twenty-first century. The 1970s were years of self-exploration for women but also for young people in general. This was a transitional decade marked by the end of the controversial Vietnam War, the increasing momentum of the Feminist Movement, and a shift in how Americans considered themselves and their place in society as social norms and values changed.