Maya Angelou 's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Perhaps the reason that Maya’s poetry has had such a lasting impact on Americans is because of her poems such as ‘Caged Birds’ and ‘Still I Rise’ that demonstrate the issues that African – Americans faced, which she has done through the power of her words. She also challenges the readers with the theme of oppression that is carried out through her pomes as she felt very strongly about it by being surrounded by it her entire life. Maya Angelou has left an everlasting mark by influencing the society through her poems by inspiring others to persist towards their goals and dreams with strength and pride. Overall, Maya Angelou’s work can be attributed to the fact that her personal and cultural experiences of power have not been forgotten by overcoming adversity and oppression, which is clearly reflected in her inspiration body of work seen

Maya Angelou was a civil rights activist, author, and poet. She wrote many books and poems that conveyed the vivid experiences in her life. Maya Angelou’s works are well known and she is an eminent writer. One poem in particular that is well known is “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,” written in 1969. In this work she described racial inequality, and the lack of freedom African Americans experienced in the 1930’s and 40’s. Maya Angelou uses many Rhetorical strategies and literary devices to describe the lack of racial freedom in the world at this time.

Maya Angelou’s use of symbolism in the book is used to describe her displacement in society and how difficult it is to find self-identity, revealing the form of being a “Caged bird.” Maya is a caged bird because she is aware of the displacement of blacks in America and the entitlement and freedom of whites. “if growing up is as painful for the southern girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat” (Angelou 4). Angelou is aware because of the color of her skin, she is living in a society that does not want her or anyone who looks like her. With her awareness Angelou, “...escapes stasis to become a subject in the perpetual process of forming and emerging. It is a dynamic subjectivity that emerges out

The purpose of this paper is to introduce, discuss, and analyze the novel I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou. Specifically it will discuss the themes of racism and segregation, and how these strong themes are woven throughout this moving autobiography. Maya Angelou recounts the story of her early life, including the racism and segregation she experiences throughout her formative years. With wit, sincerity, and remarkable talent, Angelou portrays racism as a product of ignorance and prejudice. However, she finds the strength to rise above this crippling condition.

In Maya Angelou’s I know why the caged Bird Sings Maya goes from being a very young and sporadic girl to a loving and nurturing mother. Throughout Maya’s life she goes through many trials and tribulations. By finding refuge and strength in her family she surpasses racism, rape, and displacement issues.

Maya Angelou’s poetry occupies a very special position in her development as a writer (Chow 1). As a child, Angelou went through five years of complete silence after she was raped at the age of seven years old, by a man named, Mr. Freeman. As a result of telling about her traumatic experience, her uncle’s literally kicked the man that raped her to death. Beings she spoke of her traumatic experience and the result of the man dying, she then imagined that her voice had the potential to kill. Thanks to her teacher, Bertha Flowers, at school Angelou started writing poetry as a means of expression of her life events through her poetry (Chow 1). Poetry thus played an essential part in the recovery of her voice, which in

Along the way, we will see why this woman was famous in her own right as a pioneer, and a renaissance woman. The life of this famous Black African American poet, became apparent when she wrote the book ‘I know why the Cage Bird sings’. To know Maya Angelou you would have to read this book to understand her taught as a black woman living in America. The story of her childhood living in Stamps, Arkansas with her brother is well documented due to the subsequent divorce of her parents and the sexual abuse she suffered at age seven under the watch of her mother. The ordeal quite young ‘Maya’ who was given the name by her brother was silent for five years of her life.

Maya Angelou is one out of the best known poets. She has written a lot of poems that inspires and assist people with their lives. She has a “desire humbleness to learn and experience all that life has to offer her” (gale biography in context, “Maya Angelou More than a Poet”) which makes her poems have a meaning to them. In addition, Maya Angelou got a lot of pieces of poems considered equality to her experience as a human of the United States during race times and her experience as a person who worked with other civil right activist. Maya Angelou uses deep themes that leaves the reader to think about the topic is being talked about. In her poem, “Still I Rise” she talks metaphorically about discrimination. In the poem, it states, “does my haughtiness offend you? ( the poetry foundation, “Maya Angelou”). This quote from the poem shows how the rest of the poem is about people believe they is better than other people and that the other people should suffer because they are inferior to the people, but the people being abused should not be embarrassed of who they are and be thankful for life(“Maya Angelou More than a Poet 1”).

Maya Angelou’s tumultuous childhood in the South and the struggles that come with being black are the basis for her autobiographies such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Through her rich, insightful literature she is able to record the black experience and ultimately the black struggle. She “[is] always talking about the human condition – about what we can endure, dream fail at and still survive.”(Matzu 23) Angelou’s early life was full of hardships; making her strong and ready to fight for her rights. As a young child she, along with her brother Bailey and their parents, moved from her birth place St. Louis to Long Beach. After her parents struggles there, she and Bailey were shipped off to Stamps, Arkansas; the starting point for

Maya Angelou was an African American woman who wrote about standing up for oneself and the people who have been oppressed. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou talked about a free man and an oppressed man. She went into detail that the difficulties that the written about the oppressed man was forced to face. Two aspects was presented to the reader, Maya Angelou presented the success of a free man and obstacles and difficulties that the oppressed man. “A free bird leaps on the back of the wind and floats downstream till the current ends and dips his wing in the orange sun rays and dares to claim the sky.”

Emily Dickinson a modern romantic writer, whose poems considered imaginative and natural, but also dark as she uses death as the main theme many times in her writings. She made the death look natural and painless since she wanted the reader to look for what after death and not be stuck in that single moment. In her poems imagination play a big role as it sets the ground for everything to unfold in a magical way. The speakers in Dickinson’s poetry, are sharp-sighted observers who see the inescapable limitations of their societies as well as their imagined and imaginable escapes. To make the abstract tangible, to define meaning without confining it, to inhabit a house that never became a prison, Dickinson created in her writing a distinctively elliptical language for expressing what was possible but not yet realized. She turned increasingly to this style that came to define her writing. The poems are rich in aphorism and dense

At a very young age, she was raped and abused by her mother’s boyfriend. This took such a toll on her that she decided to stop speaking for five years (Hagen). The term thriver can perfectly describe Angelou and she wanted others to not only survive but thrive in their life. Angelou once boldly stated, “But in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to celebrate. Despite the murders, rapes and suicides, we had survived...but in my heart I felt exalted knowing there was much to celebrate...we had been creative, because we faced down death by daring to hope” (Collier) In her poetry, Maya Angelou focuses on issues surrounding African American (Kirkpatrick). To combat these issues, She fills her poetry with humor and empowerment (Hagen). One of her most well known works, the poem, Phenomenal Woman, showcases her thriver mentality very well. In the poem, a woman establishes herself as not a typical beauty, but a woman who everyone cannot take their eyes off of. People know that there is something different about this woman, men have to stop and talk to her. Each stanza ends with the words, “I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That's me” (Spacey). To write this poem after the the abuse that Angelou faced in her early childhood shows how satisfied Angelou was with herself in the 1970’s when she wrote it. This is a poem to not only inspire women, but set them free

In stanza four Maya Angelou asks a series of rhetorical questions in lines thirteen and fourteen. She knows that people want to see her broken, weak and crying from the criticism and hateful words that have been said to her. She not only had to deal with criticism from being an African-American in a time when whites did not accept them into their society but also dealing with the fact that she was an African-American woman. During the fifties women were expected to marry and be a helping hand around the house. They were not expected to be in the working field. Just imagine how hard it had to be to make as an African-American women trying to achieve her goals. But she refuses to show how difficult it was through her emotion she just rises above it.

This poem is written in ballad form which is odd because one would think of a ballad and think a love story or an author gushing on about nature not an allegory about personified Death. Dickinson both unites and contrasts love/courtship with death, experimenting with both reader’s expectations and the poetic convention dictating specific poem form. This is why Dickinson is widely hailed because of her unconventional writing methods.

The poem “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou tells the story of two birds: one bird has the luxury of freedom and the second bird lives its life caged and maltreated by an unknown tyrant. Maya Angelou wrote this poem during the Civil Rights Era, the period when black activists in the 1950’s and 1960’s fought for desegregation of African Americans. This poem parallels the oppression that African Americans were fighting during this time period. In “Caged Bird”, Angelou builds a strong contrast that shows the historical context of discrimination and segregation through the use of mood, symbolism, and theme.