A FEMINIST LITERARY CRITICISM OF MAYA ANGELOU’S POEM “PHENOMENAL WOMAN”

Abstract

This research is aimed to know meaning and Feminism in Maya Angelou’s poems especially in the title “Phenomenal Woman”. In order to discover the poem, the study was conducted by using feminism theory. It focuses on words, lines, and stanzas of the poems. The research was conducted with the following statement of problem: (1) What is the dominant type of feminism in Maya Angelou’s poem? (2) What are the reasons of using feminism perspective in Maya Angelou’s poem? (3) How are the images of blank woman described in Maya Angelou’s poem?. The research design of this study is descriptive qualitative method because the researcher does not use statistical numerical but is requires descriptive analysis of the object. The research is conducted by descriptive qualitative and and technique of analysis data in this research are reading the whole poems, interpreting poems, and making the conclusion because the result of the data is word, sentence, and language. After collecting the data from the poem, the researcher analyzes put the poem into some groups which relates to the problem focuses. Based on the research questions mentioned above, the result of the study are as follows. First, the researcher concludes that the dominant type of feminism in Maya Angelou’s poem is Radical Feminism because discrimination toward black women are related to the bad history of black people. Second, the reason of using feminism perspective by the poet is the image of her bad life experiences. The last result is the image of black woman in Maya Angelou’s poem which shows the discrimination toward woman in her era. The result of the study can be used as a reference in the research literature itself in educational institution and so on. This study gives significance for the researcher to understand and provide more knowledge about feminism.