Resources for Teachers and Students

Prepare: Although Maya Angelou's rich career has included a wide variety of experience as a playwright, actor, civil rights activist, film director, musical composer, educator and essayist, she is perhaps best know for her poetry. Her biography can be found on the website of The Academy of American Poets.

Read: Maya Angelou wrote an original essay for the Architects of Peace project. Because the essay is so short, read it in conjunction with her poem "Still I Rise,". Both the essay and the poem are about a heroic attitude of being willing to act for what is right.

Explore: "A Brave and Startling Truth," a poem written by Maya Angelou to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the United Nations. The United Nations maintains its own news center on the world-wide web. After reading "A Brave and Startling Truth," scan the UN's news center, looking for ways in which peace, as Angelou defines it in her poem, is being achieved and for ways in which peace is being blocked within the world community.

Write: Write a two-to-three page interpretive essay that explores the metaphoric images of peace that are found in "A Brave and Startling Truth." After close-reading these images, conclude the paper by trying to compose a working definition of peace based upon Angelou's poem. Is peace, as the poem defines it, achievable? Is there a role for poetic imagery in the peacemaking process?

Extend: Toward the end of "A Brave and Startling Truth," Angelou states that one result of the peacemaking process is that "We learn that we are neither devils or divines." Using the conventions of Free Verse, compose a short poem that suggests other lessons that humanity can learn in the process of making peace.

Additional Resource: Maya Angelou's "official" website.

Biography of Maya Angelou