African American women’s self–esteem reflected in Maya Angelou’s phenomenal woman, woman me, and seven women’s blessed assurance

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African American women is one of inferior groups who have experienced multi discrimination in America (Shokraii,1998) which cause them having a negative self-esteem (Kardiber & Ovesey, 1951). Yet, the recent study by Patterson (2004) argues that African American women have high self-esteem and proud to be an African American woman. Patterson’s research makes the researcher questions about the result of Patterson’s research, especially from literary point of view. Therefore, the researcher aims to investigate African-American women’s self-esteem reflected in literary works of Maya Angelou, Phenomenal Woman, Woman Me, and Seven Women's Blessed Assurance.

To find the aims of this research, the researcher applies several steps pffered by Lye (1996) to analyze the poems. He states that there are several elements which have to be noted to analyze poems, whichare title, genre, voice, theme, structure, setting, imagery, figurative language, sound, historical and cultural distance from the poems, and the ideology behind the creating process of the poem. In this research, the researcher is more focusing on imagery and figurative language since Rahmawati (2011) states that imagery and figurative language employed in Maya Angelou’s poems can function to depict the condition and the image of Black African American women. As analyzing imagery and figurative language employed in Woman, Woman Me, and Seven Women's Blessed Assurance, the researcher applies the theory of Womanism by Alice Walker to identify the self-esteem reflected in those three poems.

The result of this research shows that Maya Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman, Woman Me, and Seven Women’s Blessed Assurance reflect the condition that African American women have high and positive self esteem even though they are discriminated and seen negatively by other people. Most of people consider them as a woman who is not beautiful and humiliated sexually, yet they are still confident and proud to be an African American woman.The high self-esteem of African American women is gotten from the support of their family and their group.