Literary Analysis Of Maya Angelou's Champion Of The World

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“Champion of the World” by Maya Angelou,this excerpt chronicles how a boxer named Joe Louis captivated the world by being one of the first black boxer to be heavyweight champion of the world. In the late 1930 when segregation and inequality for African Americans was so prominent, something like that captivated the world and boosted the spirits of African Americans who were being depressed and were treated horribly by whites. This story lets you see inside a store of African Americans who are listening to the radio of the championship between Joe and a white challenger. During this fight Angelou connects the fight to the pride of all African Americans and how every African American shared the same pride in him and were counting on him to solidify to the white people that they are strong and are not sub- humans. She uses paragraph 16 and 17 to get the point across to readers that it was a huge deal for African Americans that he won because they felt they would end up staying at second class citizens and go back to being slaves if he lost which at the time could have been completely probable. The purpose of these paragraphs was to …show more content…
However this African American boxer named Joe became the heavyweight champion of the world and had to defend his title against a white opponent. He carried the pride of all the oppressed African Americans and in this store in the story the reader can feel that in the way she describes how they all sit around the radio and hold their breaths as he is pinned by his opponent. She also describes the fear African Americans had of oppression and how that oppression had a terrible effect on their self esteem. Also in that moment had for them when they thought he would lose in paragraph 16 and 17. It also showed how serious an issue segregation and the possibility of more slavery was in America at the

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