Audience, purpose and mode 

Audience: readers of autobiographies – literary and in general; fans of Angelou or those who have an interest in her as a writer/celebrity. 

Purpose: to recount/share the details of her life with a view to publication; to reflect on how her career developed.

 Mode: a printed, book-form text. 

Points for analysis and discussion 

Students should be encouraged to closely analyse, discuss and evaluate the text and consider the effects of literary or linguistic choices. Some points of interest might include: 

• Contextual elements, such as Angelou’s fame as a media celebrity, as a well-known and popular writer, especially as an African-American author as well as an actress/dancer/singer. In other words, as an internationally recognised artist and campaigner and spokesperson in support of (black) women and related civil rights movements. 

• References grounded in American culture, lifestyle and linguistic choices/Americanisms, eg ‘mom’, ‘colored’, ‘favorite’, ‘hotdogs’, ‘Pontiac’. 

• Expected genre conventions of autobiography in structure and in referencing people and places, with descriptive details expounded in a reflective, retrospective use of the past tense. The focus of the piece is on her relationship with her mother with an implied sense of distance (‘once a month at an agreed time’) contrasting with the regularity of her relationship with her grandson (‘twice a week’). 

• The significance of food within these relationships – from her landlady to mother: ‘mysterious red, white and brown concoction’, ‘fed him peaches and cream ...’, ‘very serious about her delicious meals’. 

The following techniques are evident in this text: 

• Uses economical descriptions in her portrayal of her landlady that are developed and which foreground the description of the relationship with her mother, with clustered use of pre-modifiers, adjectives and adverbs, eg ‘kind and grandmotherly ... a ready babysitter ... ways so tender and personality so sweet ...’ 

• Use of humour in descriptions of landlady’s food (‘disastrous culinary exploits ... unidentifiable piece of meat’), juxtaposition (‘loyal, if often unhappy’) and irony with the use of French expression (‘Chez Jefferson’). 

• Sensuous semantic fields, with a lexis drawn from pleasure in enjoying food (which contrasts with her attitude toward her landlady’s cooking), eg ‘each grain of red rice is emblazoned ... gluttonous ... greedy ... seduction ... sated my appetite’. The sense of ritual importance in attitudes to the lunch itself, and in the performance her mother gives, that makes it seem a religious rite: ‘She fervently blessed the food and put her left hand on the platter and her right on the bowl.’ Triadic structures throughout for rhetorical effect, eg ‘crispy, dry-roasted capon ... perfect makeup and diamond earrings, and a silver fox scarf ... smoking, drinking, and cursing’. 

• This text gives opportunities for students to reflect on a variety of terms and concepts. Some examples might include: Generic conventions inherent in a piece of literary writing with a reflective tone. 

• Descriptive phrasing throughout and especially in her portrayal of her mother’s detachment, eg ‘make-up was perfect and she wore good jewelry’, ‘Vivian Baxter was very serious ...’, ‘this pretty little woman’. 

• Oblique referencing of the American context and civil rights movements, ‘... admired by most people ... and even some whites liked and respected her.’ 

• Comparisons with significant female public figures that point towards and enhance her mother’s assessment of her daughter’s potential, eg ‘Mrs Eleanor Roosevelt, Dr Mary McLeod Bethune ...’ 

• Use of direct speech when she recalls her mother’s words, eg ‘Baby I’ve been thinking and now ...’ 

• How Angelou is influenced by her mother, as implied in the shift in attitude to herself (‘Suppose she is right?’) which then extends into the final paragraph, indicating that the episode is a turning point in her life and a rejection of her (previous) lifestyle. 

• Use of a minor sentence structure to demarcate the shift in the importance of what comes next to end on a positive note, reflecting a new future: ‘Imagine ... Someday.’ 

When discussing the effects of literary or linguistic choices, students might be asked to consider questions such as: 

• What are the features which characterise this text as an autobiography? 

• How is the overall tone of the piece achieved? 

• What is the author’s intention of the text? How do you know? How successful are they in achieving this? 

• What does the writer intend to tell us about herself? How does she create a sense of her personality in the text? How does she create a sense of other people’s personalities? 

• What is the context in which this text was written? How has the context influenced the writer? 

• How has the text been crafted to meet the expectations of the supposed audience?