Envision seventy-four years ago, an African-American that had just returned from war going into a restaurant and not being served because of the oppressive Jim Crow laws. Little human dignity was given to African-Americans living during the 1930’s and 40’s in the segregated South. Blacks, especially women, were not given a felicitous education because it was illegal to acquire and obtain books during this time period (Depression 117). Despite these hardships, Maya Angelou was awarded over fifty honorary degrees for her novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Women Memoirist 43). Dealing with the dilemma to learn to read and write, one may wonder how one of the best African-American authors of all time could prosper during such manifold, impeding hardships. Her novel takes place in the Deep South in the midst of a cultural and political reformation. Written in 1969, the novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, written by Maya Angelou, was deeply influenced by growing up during the Great Depression, facing racism and discrimination in the South, and enduring sexual abuse.
Life was an incessant struggle for African-Americans living in the Depression era. Very few were employed and those who were lucky enough to have some kind of work were forced to give them up to a white man who had lost his job. Many became homeless and crammed inside small shanty homes with several other people (Depression 211). Many jobs faced boycotts and riots that quickly led to violence, such as the burning of a paper factor in St. Louis (Lynch, African American Life). The Great Depression was a result of a stock market crash on October 29th, 1929. More than half of the population was unemployed and could not afford to feed their family. Thankfully the New ...
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McElvain, Robert S. The Great Depression: America 1929-1941. New York: Random House-Three Rivers, 1984. Print.
McMurry, Myra. “Role-Playing as Art in Maya Angelou’s Caged Bird.” South Atlantic Bulletin.1976. 106-11. Rpt. In Novels for Students. Ed. Melvin J. Friedman. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2000. 134-60. Print.
Smith, Sidonie Ann, “The Song of a Caged Bird: Maya Angelou’s Quest After Self-acceptance.” The Southern Humanities Review. Auburn University, 1973. 365-75. Rpt. In Contemporary Literary Criticism. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Vol. 12. Detroit: Gale, 1980. 9-11. Print.
Taylor, Nicholas J. “Jim Crow Laws.” National Parks Service. U.S. Department of the Interior, 14 Feb. 2013. Web. 07 March. 2014.
The Great Depression, beginning in the last few months of 1929, impacted the vast majority of people nationwide and worldwide. With millions of Americans unemployed and many in danger of losing their homes, they could no longer support their families. Children, if they were lucky, wore torn up ragged clothing to school and those who were not lucky remained without clothes. The food supply was scarce, and bread was the most that families could afford. Households would receive very limited rations of food, or small amounts of money to buy food.
McElvaine, Robert S, ed. Down and Out in the Great Depression: Letters from the Forgotten Man. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1983.
Watkins, T.H. The Great Depression: America in the 1930's. Boston: Little Brown and Company, 1993.
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.
Watkins, T.H.. The Great Depression: America in the 1930s. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1993.
"The Depression, The New Deal, and World War II." African American Odyssey: (Part 1). N.p., n.d. Web. 06 Mar. 2014.
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.
Similarly, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, which I first read the summer after I graduated high school, is a tale of oppression that translates into a deeply moving novel chronicling the ups and downs of a black family in the 1930’s and 1940’s. A myriad of historical and social issues are addressed, including race relations in the pre-civil rights south, segregated schools, sexual abuse, patriotism and religion. Autobiographical in nature, this tumultuous story centers around Marguerite Johnson, affectionately called "Maya", and her coast-to-coast life experiences. From the simple, backwards town of Stamps, Arkansas to the high-energy city life of San Francisco and St. Louis, Maya is assaulted by prejudice in almost every nook and cranny of society, until she finally learns to overcome her insecurities and be proud of who she is.
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. .
experience the hardship of their time. Segregation of whites and black, economy, war, and a
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.
The novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings goes through the childhood of Maya Angelou as she faces the difficult realities of the early South. This novel does not do a very good job at portraying the hardships of the blacks because she
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.