Answer to Question #220010 in English for Tanya msimango

Question

Maya Angelou

The breezes of the West African night were intimate and shy, licking the hair, sweeping through cotton dresses with unseemly intimacy, and then disappearing into the utter blackness. Daylight was equally insistent, but much more bold and thoughtless. It dazzled, muddling the sight. It forced through my closed eyelids, bringing me up and out of a borrowed bed and into brand new streets.

After living nearly two years in Cairo, I had brought my son Guy to enter the University of Ghana in Accra. I had planned to stay for two weeks with a friend of a colleague, settle Guy into his dormitory, and then continue to Liberia to a job with the Department of Information.

Guy was seventeen and quick. I was thirty-three and determined. We were Black Americans in West Africa, where for the first time in our lives the color of our skin was accepted as correct and normal.

a) What do you think is the writer’s purpose in this text? Provide two relevant examples from the text to support your answer. (5 marks)

Answer 1

The intended to pass a message that racial discrimination is not right. He provides a scenario where he traverses different parts of Africa through learning and working, a scenario that is subjected to racial discrimination in the United States.