I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Introduction

In her anthology Written by Herself , Jill Ker Conway discuses a central theme in black women 's autobiography that is fully shown in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970 ) by Maya Angelou : Because , from girlhood these women faced the dual injustices of racial hostility and male exploitation , their life histories are told with no hint of romantic conventions . They describe , instead , a quest for physical and psychological survival (3 . Angelou 's illustration of her childhood and adolescence shows

her frequent conflicts with racism , sexism , and injustice at the same time that the Maya describes her personal qualities , events , and the people that helped her to survive the destructive effects of her environment and served as positive role models for her . Despite the constant oppression she faced as a girl growing up lacking financial or other means of subsistence in the racially segregated town of Stamps , Arkansas , Angelou gives emphasis to the role models of her family members who sustained and raised her These people contributed to Angelou 's development into a brave independent young black woman

A Song of Transcendence : Maya Angelou

HYPERLINK "http /www .questia .com /reader /action /gotoDocId Maya Angelou 's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was published at the end of the civil rights movement of the 1960s , and it carries with itself the bitter and hard-won fruit of this historical period . Angelou knows the cruel realities of life in the raciest Deep South in the mid-twentieth century . As the critic Roger Rosenblatt (1974 ) has stated No black American author has ever felt the need to invent a nightmare to make [her] point (174 . As Maya Angelou describes her childhood High spots in Stamps were usually negative : droughts , floods lynchings and deaths (Conway 45 . Touched by the harsh effects of these negative forces , Maya Angelou goes through her life with sense of self-importance and self-respect . She moves forward toward a goal of freedom with a sense of self-knowledge , an understanding of the political realities of black life in the racist South , and a realization of the responsibility that such an understanding involves

Significant Others

Maya describes several Black women nurturing a young Black girl in a racist and sexist society . These Black women characters serve as positive role models for Maya . This autobiography illustrates how Black women love themselves and each other in spite of living in a world that does not love or respect them . Angelou 's work describes a positive character of Black women who support each other and still remain individuals , free to choose their own paths to self-sufficiency . Angelou writes : if growing up is painful for the Southern black girl , being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat . It is an unnecessary insult (4 . Her autobiography illustrates the painful double strikes of becoming Black and female adult . As a young girl , Maya Angelou has a strong desire to be white , to...