Name: _____________________________________ Date: ________________ Period: _______

Guided Questions for When I Lay My Burden Down by Maya Angelou

Ms. White/English I
Directions: After reading WILMBD, record your responses to and prepare to discuss the
following questions. Your response must be in COMPLETE SENTENCES. Use evidence from
the text to support your answers. (AJI)
1. Why does the narrator refer to the powhitetrash girls as apparitions?

2. Why do you think the narrator did not believe in the powhitetrash girls fleshy reality?

3. Angelous uncle always obeyed the orders of the powhitetrash girls. Why do you think thats
so?

4. What is the narrator implying when she says, to Momma? Who owned the land they lived
on? Who forgot more than they would ever learn?

5. Given the meaning of the phrase cat-o-nine tails, what does the narrator mean when she
says the dirty children threw their orders around the Store like lashes from a cat-o-nine tails?
How do you know this?

6. What is important about the way Angelou described her grandmothers apron?

7. How would you describe the way Momma and Angelou felt about their yard? How do you
know?

8. What do you think the narrator means when she says, [Momma] did an excellent job of
sagging from the waist down, but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling from the top of the
oak tree?

9.Angelou, though very young in the story, seems to be a lot braver than her family members.
Why do you think this is true?

10.What does Angelou mean when she says, I suppose my life-long paranoia was born in those
cold, molasses-slow minutes?

11. What do you think is the significance of Mommas humming? Why do you think this?

12. Angelou says that her grandmothers knees seemed to have locked as if they would never
bend again. What does this mean?

13. What does the narrator mean when she says, The world had taken a deep breath and was
having doubts about continuing to revolve?

14. What does Angelou mean when she says, Whatever the contest had been out front, I
know Momma had won? Do you agree or disagree? Why?