The Portrayal of Gender Power Disparity in American Society in “Men” and “A Kind of Love, Some Say” Amy Jenkinson 12th Grade

Feminist ideas were already at large when Maya Angelou published her poetry anthology “And Still I Rise” in 1984. The 1900s saw many significant changes in terms of women’s rights: women were given the right to vote in 1920, the 1960s saw the rise to the Women’s Rights Movements, and in 1972 the Equal Rights Amendment was passed, which stated that a person’s rights shall not be denied on account of their sex. Although this century created more equality, 1900s American society still remained a patriarchal society – in the Declaration of Independence, it states that “all men are created equal”; leaving women as unequal to men in society and oppressed. Angelou uses her poems to evaluate the power disparity between men and women in the late 1900s American society.

The great difference between men and women in late 1900s American society is evident through Angelou’s portrayal of lost innocence within her poems. This is most prominent in her poem “Men” in which a young girl loses her virginity to a man. Angelou states, after this takes place: “And taste tries to return to the tongue / Your body has slammed shut. Forever. / No keys exist.” For the woman, there is no returning to a time of naïve innocence – Angelou’s description of...