Maya Angelou, a Phenomenal Woman Maya Angelou is a strong, phenomenal woman. She was multi-talented and very successful. Over the years she earned many awards for her works. In Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, “Still I Rise,” “Phenomenal Woman,” and “When I Think About Myself,” she uses a caged bird to symbolize herself as a child; she also creates a vivid theme for the reader and utilizes metaphors to make her point.
Maya Angelou was multi-talented. She was an author, actress, screenwriter, dancer, and poet. Growing up, Maya lived in Stamps, Arkansas after her parents split. Living in Arkansas she faced racial hardships. In San Francisco she got a scholarship at the California labor school to study dance and acting. At age sixteen she became pregnant with a baby boy. Later in the fifty’s Maya Angelou appeared in many productions. Her career began to take off. In the sixty’s she lived in Egypt and then Ghana. When she moved back to the United States she wrote a memoir about her life experiences. It was titled, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She was the first African American to have a non-fiction best seller.
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It is written from a child’s point of view in reference to Maya Angelou’s real life experiences. The climax occurs when Maya got raped by her uncle at the age of eight. Afterwards, she is trying to heal the wounds as a result of her uncle violating her. The book has gotten plenty recognition from its trauma and hardships the young girl faces in the story. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Angelou’s answer to the question of how a black girl can grow in a repressive system without being maimed by it.” When Maya was a young child her answer to everything was to become mute. Eventually moving back to Stamps, Arkansas, she blossomed. She found love in her mother and Grandmother. Both women had great power and
Angelou well known as an entertainer was urged by James Baldwin and by the cartoonist Jules fifer and his wife Judy to try her hand at writing an autobiography. After several refuels she agreed the results was a unique series of autobiographical narratives. I know why the caged bird sings is the first of Maya Angelous's five autobiographies. It covers her life form the age of three when her parents send her and her brother bailey to live with their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson in stamps Arkansas until the age of sixteen when she becomes a mother. Annie is the main influence on her childhood.(Lupton 24).during her stay at her grandmothers Maya is raped by her mothers boyfriend Mr. freeman who warns her to be silent or he will kill her brother bailey . after the trial freeman dies after being violent beaten ,presumably by Mayas unless. Maya indeed silent mute she cannot will speak. The silent Maya is returned to momma Henderson though reaming speech less for five years until she recovers her voice through patient help of her grandmother's friend Mrs. bertha flowers.(Lupton 52).
The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.
There are many obstacles in which Maya Angelou had to overcome throughout her life. However, she was not the only person affected throughout the story, but as well as her family. Among all the challenges in their lives the author still manages to tell the rough and dramatic story of the life of African Americans during a racism period in the town of Stamps. In Maya Angelou's book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings she uses various types of language to illustrate the conflicts that arise in the novel. Among the different types of languages used throughout the book, she uses literary devices and various types of figurative language. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou the author uses literary devices and figurative language to illustrate to the reader how racism creates obstacles for her family and herself along with how they overcome them.
Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was published in 1969 at a time when autobiographies of women, especially black women, were a way of proclaiming the significance of women’s lives, and examining issues of certain impact to women. It is the resilient and harrowing coming-of-age story of Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Ann Johnson, set in Stamps (Arkansas), St. Louis and San Francisco. It reveals the difficulties associated with the mixture of racial and gender discrimination experienced by a southern black girl. At the same time, she declares many issues, such as the relationship between parents and children, child abuse, and the search for one’s own path in life. Three of the influential women in Maya's life notably influence self-growth, strength of character and love of literature.
In the text "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" a young black girl is growing up with racism surrounding her. It is very interesting how the author Maya Angelou was there and the way she described every detail with great passion. In the book Maya and Bailey move to a lot of places, which are, Stamps, Arkansas; St. Louis, Missouri; and San Francisco, California. Maya comes threw these places with many thing happening to her and people she knows. She tries to hold onto all the good memories and get rid of the bad but new ones just keep coming. That is why this book is very interesting. It keeps readers on the edge of their seats.
Maya Angelou's writing career began during the late 1950's, around the same period when the Civil Rights Movement began to take place. Maya's known for one f her most famous poems, I Know Why The Cage Birds Sing. This poem is basically talking about how the birds in the cage are the African Americans/Blacks, where they have no freedom. "The free bird leaps on the back of the wind/and floats downstream till the current ends/And dips his wings in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky."(Angelou, 1-3) In the beginning , of this poem Maya Angelou is using the free bird to refer to the white people because they have all the rights and the blacks are stuck in "the cage" with no rights or freedom. Also, she could have a more positive aspect meaning that the free bird is the Black American dream coming to reality. After, being in ...
Maya Angelou was a grammy-winning author, memoirist, poet, and a civil right activist. As Maya Angelou once said “ I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” This reflects a lot on her poem Caged Bird because she will never forget how the people in her town made her feel like her feet were tied and her wings were clipped. As an African American Angelou suffered at the hands of racial prejudices and discrimination as she was growing up whether it was in her town or in her own home. In her poem Caged Bird Angelou talks about how the free bird doesn’t have a care in the world, but she also talks about how the caged bird longs to someday be free. Although Maya Angelou died as a well-known famous poet and used her knowledge and her words to overpower racial discrimination she grew up in an oppressed society because of darkness, pain, and fear.
In Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", tender-hearted Marguerite Johnson, renamed Maya by her refined brother Bailey, discovers all of the splendors and agonies of growing up in a prejudiced, early twentieth century America. Rotating between the slow country life of Stamps, Arkansas and the fast-pace societies in St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California taught Maya several random aspects of life while showing her segregated America from coast to coast.
Maya Angelou is an author and poet who has risen to fame for her emotionally filled novels and her deep, heartfelt poetry. Her novels mainly focus on her life and humanity with special emphasis on her ideas of what it means to live. The way she utilizes many different styles to grab and keep readers’ attention through something as simple as an autobiography is astounding. This command of the English language and the grace with which she writes allows for a pleasant reading experience. Her style is especially prominent in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", where the early events of Angelou’s life are vividly described to the reader in the postmodern literary fashion.
Maya Angelou’s excerpt from her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” reveals the challenges facing a young black girl in the south. The prologue of the book tells of a young Angelou in church trying to recite a poem she has forgotten. She describes the dress her grandmother has made her and imagines a day where she wakes up out of her black nightmare. Angelou was raised in a time where segregation and racism were prevalent in society. She uses repetition, diction, and themes to explore the struggle of a black girl while growing up. Angelou produces a feeling of compassion and poignancy within the reader by revealing racial stereotypes, appearance-related insecurities, and negative connotations associated with being a black girl. By doing this she forces the
Walker, Pierre A. Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Vol. 22. West Chester: Collage Literature, n.d. Literary Reference Center. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
The book thus explores a lot of important issues, such as: sexuality and race relations, and shows us how society violated her as a young African American female. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou clearly expresses the physical pain of sexual assault, the mental anguish of not daring to tell, and her guilt and shame for having been raped. Her timidity and fear of telling magnify the brutality of the rape. For more than a year after the rape she lives in self-imposed silence, speaking only very rarely. This childhood rape reveals the pain that African American women suffered as victims not only of racism but also sexism.
In her autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”, Maya (Marguerite) Angelou recounts her experience of growing up during the 1930’s and 1940’s in the south as a black girl and of her teen years in California. Through her individual experiences we learn much about the collective condition of people in that era of American history. Written with beautifully poetic and sometimes striking candor, we get a glimpse into another time and a world that feels somewhat foreign and at times repulsive, yet also familiar as we relate to coming of age and cultural legacy commonalities. Told from the perspective of herself as a child and teen, her story exposes readers to the “cage” of being a lonely, intelligent, traumatized and guilt-ridden youth
Maya Angelou is a well acclaimed poet, author, and civil rights activist. Though she passed away in 2014, her work continues to awe and inspire people worldwide. Angelou had written numerous poems, but in this analysis I will be focusing on “Caged Bird,” “Phenomenal Woman,” and finally “Touched by An Angel.” In these works we see her approach issues such as equality, racism, feminism, love and many more issues as well. Angelou is a very skilled poet; though some people find her work too straight forward and little more than common text broken into stanzas. Maya Angelou 's poems are easy to understand; and though I do enjoy her work, I find that how she structures her poems can be confusing
Throughout I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, racism is a frequent obstacle that non-whites had to overcome. When Maya is young, she doesn’t recognize the racism and discrimination as well as her grandmother does. As Maya gets older, she begins to recognize and take notice to the racism and discrimination towards her and African Americans everywhere. Maya may not recognize the racism and discrimination very well at her young age, but it still affects her outlook on life the same way it would if she had recognized it. The racism and discrimination Maya faced throughout I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, affected her attitude, personality, and overall outlook on life in a positive way.