Maya Angelou Questions

9.  Angelou plays solitaire with a deck of cards to occupy her "small mind" when she is trying to get focused to write.  What things do you do to occupy your small mind in a positive way?  What are your biggest distractions when you need to get something done?

When I need to occupy my "small mind", I always play music and sometimes i even have to turn the tv on at the same time so my mind can focus.  I often get distracted when I have to get something done, I think about exercising or making food or what I'm gonna wear tomorrow; anything but what i'm supposed to be doing.


3.  Angelou says she doesn't even like to talk about her bad dreams because talking about them "gives them too much power."  Do you think talking about bad dreams or bad news or other bad things (or feeding into the "drama" at school or in life) gives those bad things more power?  When have you known this to happen?

I think discussing bad dreams or bad experiences helps to get rid of the strong feellings you have towards them.  The more I tell a bad story, the easier it gets to say.  But, it's better to try and focus on happy feelings and good dreams so that you can stay positive.  The only way you can give those bad things power is by submitting to those feelings instead of digesting them and moving on.

5. After going through a major trauma at age seven, Angelou didn't talk for almost five years.  Could you live this way?  Do you talk too much or too little? What could you learn if you listened more and spoke less? How could you grow as a person by speaking more?

I definitely wouldn't be able to live as a "mute".  When i was in seventh grade, we would play a game where everyone would go silent and the last person to speak is the winner. I always lost within minutes.  Talking is the main  way people express their feelings and opinions and I don't think I could survive without being able to speak my mind.  I do talk a little too much, sometimes I ramble on and on to people.  If i spoke less and actually listened to other people's opinions i would learn a lot more and become more instightful.  I definitely would grow as a person if i spoke more. I am very shy and quiet, I'm barely able to talk to the cashier at the store. 

10.  Angelou quotes Nathaniel West as saying, "Easy reading is damned hard writing" and says writing is "just hard work, you know?"  Do you agree with this?  What is easiest and hardest to you about writing?  Is writing hard work?

Writing is very hard work. Writing down sentence after sentence is easy, but "to write well, to write so that a reader thinks she's making up the book as she goes along, that's hard".  I think creating an idea in your head is easy, but actually trying to get it down on paper the way you imagined it is extremely difficult.