Gather Together In My Name Essay, Research Paper

Gather together in my name is an autobiography about a time Maya Angelou’s life. She is a teenage mom living with her family without a job. Maya doesn’t want to live with her family forever, she wants to prove she can do it on her own. She sets out to make a living for her and her baby.She works as a cook for a small restaurant, meets and falls in love with a man with a fiancee’ in another state but, she dates him, anyway. His fiancee’ comes back and Maya falls into a depression. Her brother comes to visit and talks her into leaving the city and starting over. So, she moves to Los Angeles.In Los Angeles, she works as a waitress at the Hi Hat Club, where she meets a couple of girls there who invite her to their home for dinner. Once there, the girls get Maya high and try to put moves on her, insulted, she vows revenge. Through some fast talking, she ends up pimping the girls out. When the girls get mad at her and threaten to turn her in, Maya leaves town.She goes to the South, where she was raised. Her peers think she is silly for getting out and then coming back. They get her drunk and make fun of her. When she really gets into trouble is when she gets snotty with a local white woman. Since lynchings are still popular in this town, her grandma feels it is best if Maya goes backs to the city.So, she goes back to her mom’s and works as a cook and signs up for the women’s army. She is discharged because she didn’t mention that she once was a member of communist dance class (when she was a little kid).She sees an ad for a dance partner in the newspaper, and decides that she’ll audition. She gets the job but, her partner’s old partner comes back. Maya loses her job.She works in another kitchen and falls in love with another man who trick her into working in a whore house. Her brother finds out what she is doing and makes her quit. She realizes thate her was jost a pimp and didn’t love her at all. She is heart broken but she doesn’t have time to wallow in it becuse the babysitter has kidnapped her son.She get her son and moves back in with her mom and work in another kitchen. She is offered ad raise to help train some boxers. But, after the first day she was so disgusted she quit both jobs.She lets a friend of hers use her house as a dressing room for his customers. She falls in love with him, but wonders why he never offers to take her out on the weekends. When she mentions it to him, her shows her that he does, he shows her what he does. He takes her to a hotel and shoots up. After that she realizes how tough the “underworld” is and vows not to ever get caught up in it.