The book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the 1969 autobiography about the early years of writer and poet Maya Angelou. It is the first of six volumes about Maya’s life and the hardships she faced growing up and even in adulthood. This book covers the years from the early 1930's, up until about 1970. Out of the six, it is probably the most popular and critically acclaimed volume, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of personality and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. All of her volumes center around the themes of family, self-discovery, and motherhood, though in expressions of writing fashion and plot each of the books are different. At the beginning of the book abandoned by their parents, three-year-old Maya and her older brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, and as the book ends Maya becomes a mother at the age of 17. Throughout the course of the book, lessons are taught and learned and Maya is totally changed from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-confident, distinguished young woman competent of responding to discrimination. Stamps, Arkansas, as depicted in the book has very little social ambiguity: it is a racist world divided between Black and white, male and female. Maya also characterizes the division as good and evil, and tells of how she witnessed the evil in her world, generally directed at black women, and how it shaped her young life and formed her views into adulthood. (Als 2002). Critic Pierre A. Walker places Angelou's autobiography in the African American writing tradition of political protest. She demonstrates, through her relationship with the black community of Stamps, as well as her appearance of ... ... middle of paper ... ...d February 18, 2011 from http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F0CEEDA113CF933A05752C0A965958260. Craddock, Terence George. (2011). Maya Angelou: A Phenomenal Woman? Retrieved February 20, 2011 from http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/maya-angelou-a-phenomenal-woman/ Lupton, Mary Jane. (1998). Maya Angelou: A Critical Companion. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group Prose, Francine (September 1999). "I know why the caged bird cannot read". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved February 18, 2011 from http://www.scribd.com/doc/2315657/HarpersMagazine1999090060648. Walker, Pierre A. (October 1995). "Racial protest, identity, words, and form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". College Literature 22 (3): 91–108. Retrieved February 17 from http://web.archive.org/web/20080401071226/http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3709/is_199510/ai_n8723217
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.
Thursby, Jacqueline S. "'Phenomenal Woman'." Critical Companion to Maya Angelou: A Literary Reference to Her Life and Work, Critical Companion. New York: Facts On File, Inc., 2011. Bloom's Literature. Facts On File, Inc. Web. 7 May 2014.
Her religious upbringing gave her the courage to sing through her poetry as a black female trapped in an invisable cage made of racial prejudice and economic poverty. Maya Angelou literally and sybolically sings through her writing and her poetry. The caged bird is sybolic of a black female learning to cope and fight against the the racist attitudes and realities that exist in America. Maya knows why the caged bird sings because she realizes she is a caged bird in a rascist society. A caged bird can sing a beautiful song or a black female in America can write beautiful
O'Neale, Sondra. "Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography." Black Women Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984, pp. 25-37.
Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography that describes the coming of age of a Southern black girl who overcomes society’s cruelty as she grows up. Taking place in Stamps, Kansas during the 1930s, the autobiography captures Marguerite Ann Johnson’s, or Maya’s, battle of finding herself and coming to terms with who she is while growing up in a time period comprised of oppression and discrimination. Furthermore, Maya endures many childhood hardships due to her race, and she defeats these obstacles with her intelligence and fortitude. Thus, Maya Angelou utilizes her vividly detailed experiences of racism’s impact on her and her resistance to racism to demonstrate the struggle of the Southern black girl who grows up in a society overwhelmed with white superiority.
Given all the stereotypes of an African American woman since she was a child, Maya Angelou told the world that, “I believe all things are possible for a human being and I don’t think there’s anything I can’t do” (“Encyclopedia”). Angelou makes it clear that her race would not hold her back from pursuing her dreams of becoming a successful woman. In Maya Angelou’s autobiographical novel, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, the hardships of growing up as an African American in Stamps, Arkansas are described through her personal experiences. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4th, 1928, her parents, Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson Sr., sent her and her brother, Bailey Johnson Jr., to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie “Momma” Henderson
In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou takes us on a journey of her life from birth to her teenage years. Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She grew up during a time of segregation in America. As a young child, she faced many struggles that many of us will never face in our lifetime. She suffered through her parents' divorce, bullying, insecurity, racism and abuse. This book is important because it shows that even with the most sever hardships, Maya Angelou found the strength to overcome her pain and continue to succeed.
The novel’s young protagonist first loses her sense of self during early childhood as a result of her constant self-comparison to White people. In this autobiography, Angelou refers to herself by her full name, Marguerite Ann Johnson. Maya (in the novel Marguerite Johnson) first shows her discontent of her skin when she puts on her silk Easter dress hoping to resemble a movie star and “look like one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right in the world” (Angelou 2). To her, the vision of this magnificent movie star would only
Maya Angelou, a well-known African American author is best known for her autobiographies and her poems. Her legacy that she left behind is the hope, strength, and fortitude that she inspires not only in African American women but in all women in general. Throughout all of her work, there is a common topic that she embodies about overcoming social obstacles and the struggle for self-acceptance. There is also the themes of love, loss, rejection, social acceptance, racial differences, resistance and national consciousness. Some more themes that apply to both her poems and her life are of women, power, and poetry and these themes limit every assumption that people made in the 20th century. She uses her poetry and autobiographies to show the differences
Maya Angelou's coming of age memoir is titled, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Generally, within the first few chapters of a novel a reader can deduce the meaning of the title, however throughout this entire novel I never truly understood the meaning until the last few chapters. In the final chapters, the reader can unquestionably identify her struggles growing up and can visually see how it helped her become who she is as an adult. The title I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, illustrates the hardships that Maya, and her fellow black citizens in her community faced growing up in a pre Civil Rights Movement era.
Lucia Raatma writes about a woman, author of many plays, books and poems, Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou lived a difficult life growing up where blacks were tormented for standing up for what they believed in. It came out in one of her books “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” The book deals with Maya’s early life, describing her childhood in Arkansas, St. Louis, and California. Critics praised her work. The reference book consists of all Maya Angelou’s valuable moments in life from producing a ten-part program for the National Public Radio to another try at marriage. The book was helpful because it portrayed both the negative and positive parts of her live with civil rights and becoming a free independent woman with rights. This a trusted reference
At a young age, Maya Angelou’s parents got divorced. After the divorce was final Maya and her older brother, Bailey, were sent away to live with their grandmother. Angelou’s not so perfect life started when she was a young girl. “When she was about three years old, their parents divorced and the children were sent to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou claims that her grandmother, whom she called ‘momma, had a deep-brooding love that hung over everything she touched’” (Burt). In the first chapter of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the book starts with Angelou talking about her parent's divorce. “Our parents decided to put an end to their calamitous marriage, and father shipped us home to his mothers” (Angelou 5). After living with her grandmother, or as Maya begins to call her “momma”, for 4 years Maya Angelou and her brother Bailey are sent back to St. Louis Missouri. In St Louis they lived with her mother and her boyfriend Mr.Freeman. Mr.Freeman makes a huge impact on young Maya’s life. When she was only 8-years-old he rapes her, after being raped Angelou becomes mute and will ...
In her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is about a young Maya Angelou who finds the strength to say “I can” in a world built on the oppression and suffering of her ancestors (Moore 49). Motherhood is a continuing theme throughout nearly all of Angelou’s biographies as well as the reclaim of her body and sexuality (Lupton 159). In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings angelou shows a clear progression “from rage and indignation to subtle resistance to active protest” in order to not only give it a thematic unity but also to “contrast the otherwise episodic quality of the narrative” (Walker 80). In order for a woman to write of her own rape she must first overcome both the racism and sexism she will encounter and take her body back as her own rather than an oversexualised object (Vermillion
Maya Angelou chronicles the stories of the first seventeen years of her life in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As an African-American woman, she is trapped within the cage of “masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power” (Angelou 268). Her ethnic origin and personal experience strongly influence her conception of writing, so the central themes of her works are generally about racial discrimination and the emancipation of black women in the United States. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou describes multiple female characters who defy gender stereotypes and prove society's preconceived view of women to be wrong. Through the feminist literary theory perspective, Annie Henderson, Vivian Baxter,
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a story about a Black female growing up in the American South during the 1930’s and 40’s. Maya Angelou, the narrator and author of this book, writes about growing up in a society filled with racism and hatred. From rape to racism, Maya Angelou has experienced an immense amount of hardships and grievances her whole life. Through these experiences, Maya learns the true meaning of courage, independence, and trust; she realizes that the hardships and various experiences in one’s life can only make that person stronger in the end.