Maya Angelou, "Champion of the World"

Alright, ready to start the semester well in English. In the past week, longest week ever, In 11 AP we read a chapter, from Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, a short story on its own in a way, "The Champion of the World". In the depiction of the memorable Joe Louis fight, Angelou doesn't hold back all the little quirks and seemingly background nuances to make the piece come alive. Angelou starts off by describing the mood before the fight "as a black sky is streaked with lightning" (88), using the color black almost as a representative as the African Americans as a race with Joe Louis, their lightning, brightening up the sky and foreshadowing a storm. The storm is gradually built up, the tension rising, and represents the start to the fight for equal rights. Angelou's use of color as a symbol, hinting towards the different races, is prevalent throughout the entire two and a half pages of the story. For now, I just wanted to focus on interpreting the lightning in perhaps a different way than we did in class.