Symbols of Anti-Racism in Maya Angelou's "Million Man March

Abstract

AbstractThis research aims to track down Maya Angelou's anti-racism orientation in her poem "Million Man March" through analyzing the symbols that she manipulated in the poem. Angelou employs the symbolic technique as a figurative language to delineate the miserable reality of the Afro-Americans in the USA and to declare her refusal and rejection of all aspects of the white's racial discrimination that Afro-Americans have experienced and endured in their life. The researchers argue that Angelou in this poem uses two kinds of symbols: first those which reflect pessimistic reality of the black people and the second set of symbols delineate love, unity and joy. These two sets of symbols are contradictory but they emphasize how Angelou looks at both the past’s miserable reality from one side and on the other side how she stresses the significance of the present which must not be usurped by that past.Keywords: racism, symbols, optimism, pessimism, unity, love.