I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Encyclopedia
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
about the early years of African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly...
. The first in a six-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
and trauma
Psychological trauma
Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...
. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps
Stamps, Arkansas
Stamps is a city in Lafayette County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 2,131 at the 2000 census.Stamps was the shop headquarters for the former Louisiana and Arkansas Railway until the relocation in the early 1920s to Minden, Louisiana....
, Arkansas
Arkansas
Arkansas is a state located in the southern region of the United States. Its name is an Algonquian name of the Quapaw Indians. Arkansas shares borders with six states , and its eastern border is largely defined by the Mississippi River...
, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 17. In the course of Caged Bird, Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex
Inferiority complex
An inferiority complex, in the fields of psychology and psychoanalysis, is a feeling that one is inferior to others in some way. Such feelings can arise from an imagined or actual inferiority in the afflicted person...
into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice.
Angelou was challenged by her friend, author James Baldwin
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, and her editor, Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis is an executive book editor at Random House, where he has worked since 1957. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."...
, to write an autobiography that was also a piece of literature. Because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to fiction, reviewers often categorize Caged Bird as autobiographical fiction, but the prevailing critical view characterizes it as an autobiography, a genre she attempts to critique, change, and expand. The book covers topics common to autobiographies written by Black American women in the years following the civil rights movement: a celebration of Black motherhood; a critique of racism; the importance of family; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition.
Angelou uses her autobiography to explore subjects such as identity
Cultural identity
Cultural identity is the identity of a group or culture, or of an individual as far as one is influenced by one's belonging to a group or culture. Cultural identity is similar to and has overlaps with, but is not synonymous with, identity politics....
, rape
Rape
Rape is a type of sexual assault usually involving sexual intercourse, which is initiated by one or more persons against another person without that person's consent. The act may be carried out by physical force, coercion, abuse of authority or with a person who is incapable of valid consent. The...
, racism, and literacy
Literacy
Literacy has traditionally been described as the ability to read for knowledge, write coherently and think critically about printed material.Literacy represents the lifelong, intellectual process of gaining meaning from print...
. She also writes in new ways about women's lives in a male-dominated society. Maya, the younger version of Angelou and the book's central character, has been called "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America". Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the book, although it is presented briefly in the text. Rape is used as a metaphor
Metaphor
A metaphor is a literary figure of speech that uses an image, story or tangible thing to represent a less tangible thing or some intangible quality or idea; e.g., "Her eyes were glistening jewels." Metaphor may also be used for any rhetorical figures of speech that achieve their effects via...
for the suffering of her race. Another metaphor, that of a bird struggling to escape its cage, is a central image throughout the work, which consists of "a sequence of lessons about resisting racist oppression". Angelou's treatment of racism delivers a thematic unity to the book. Literacy, and seizing the power of words, help young Maya cope with her bewildering world; books become her refuge as she works through her trauma.
Caged Bird was nominated for a National Book Award
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
in 1970 and remained on The New York Times paperback bestseller list for two years. It has been used in educational settings from high schools to universities, and the book has been celebrated for creating new literary avenues for the American memoir. However, the book's graphic depiction of childhood rape, racism, and sexuality has caused it to be challenged or banned in some schools and libraries. In 2011, the TIME
Time
Time is a part of the measuring system used to sequence events, to compare the durations of events and the intervals between them, and to quantify rates of change such as the motions of objects....
magazine placed the book in its list, 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923, the beginning of the magazine.
Background
James Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
. After hearing civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speak for the first time in 1960, she was inspired to join the Civil Rights movement. She organized several benefits for him, and he named her Northern Coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference
Southern Christian Leadership Conference
The Southern Christian Leadership Conference is an African-American civil rights organization. SCLC was closely associated with its first president, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr...
. She next worked for several years in Ghana
Ghana
Ghana , officially the Republic of Ghana, is a country located in West Africa. It is bordered by Côte d'Ivoire to the west, Burkina Faso to the north, Togo to the east, and the Gulf of Guinea to the south...
, West Africa, as a journalist, actress, and educator. She was invited back to the US by Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
to work for him shortly before his assassination in 1965. In 1968, King asked her to organize a march, but he too was assassinated
Martin Luther King, Jr. assassination
Martin Luther King, Jr., a prominent American leader of the African-American civil rights movement and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, was assassinated at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968, at the age of 39...
.
The assassinations were "particularly painful" for Angelou because she had agreed to work for both Malcolm X and King a few months before their deaths. King died on her birthday, so she did not celebrate it for many years. She was deeply depressed in the months following King's assassination, so to help lift her spirits, Baldwin brought her to a dinner party at the home of cartoonist Jules Feiffer
Jules Feiffer
Jules Ralph Feiffer is an American syndicated cartoonist, most notable for his long-run comic strip titled Feiffer. He has created more than 35 books, plays and screenplays...
and his wife Judy in late 1968. The guests began telling stories of their childhoods and Angelou's stories impressed Judy Feiffer. The next day she called Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis is an executive book editor at Random House, where he has worked since 1957. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."...
at Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, who became Angelou's editor throughout her long writing career, and "told him that he ought to get this woman to write a book". At first, Angelou refused, since she thought of herself as a poet and playwright. According to Angelou, Baldwin had a "covert hand" in getting her to write the book, and advised Loomis to use "a little reverse psychology". She reported that Loomis tricked her into it by daring her: "It’s just as well", he said, "because to write an autobiography as literature is just about impossible". In her words, Angelou was unable to "resist a challenge", and she began writing Caged Bird. After "closeting herself" in London, it took her two years to write it.
Although she did not intend to compose a series of autobiographies, Angelou later wrote five additional volumes, covering a variety of her young adult experiences. They are distinct in style and narration, but unified in their themes and stretch from Arkansas to Africa, from the beginnings of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
to King's assassination. Like those of Caged Bird, the events in these books are episodic and crafted as a series of short stories, yet do not follow a strict chronology. Later books in the series include Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
(1974), Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas is the third book of Maya Angelou's six-volume autobiography series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this volume, Angelou describes her struggles to support her young son, form meaningful relationships and...
(1976), The Heart of a Woman
The Heart of a Woman
The Heart of a Woman is an autobiography by African-American writer Maya Angelou, and was chosen as an Oprah's Book Club selection in 1997...
(1981), All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, published in 1986, is the fifth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's six-volume autobiography series. Set between 1962 and 1965, the book begins when Angelou is thirty-three years old, and recounts the years she lived in Accra, Ghana...
(1986), and A Song Flung Up to Heaven
A Song Flung Up to Heaven
A Song Flung Up to Heaven, published in 2002, is the sixth book in African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou's six-volume autobiography series....
(2002). Critics have often judged Angelou's subsequent autobiographies "in light of the first", and Caged Bird generally receives the highest praise.
Angelou describes her writing process as regimented. Beginning with Caged Bird, she has used the same "writing ritual" for many years. She gets up at five in the morning and checks into a hotel room, where the staff has been instructed to remove any pictures from the walls. She writes on legal pads while lying on the bed, with only a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire
Solitaire
Solitaire is any tabletop game which one can play by oneself or with other people. The solitaire card game Klondike is often known as simply Solitaire....
, Roget's Thesaurus
Roget's Thesaurus
Roget's Thesaurus is a widely-used English language thesaurus, created by Dr. Peter Mark Roget in 1805 and released to the public on 29 April 1852. The original edition had 15,000 words, and each new edition has been larger...
, and the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
, and leaves by the early afternoon. She averages 10–12 pages of material a day, which she edits down to three or four pages in the evening. Angelou goes through this process to "enchant" herself, and as she said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, to "relive the agony, the anguish, the Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang
Sturm und Drang is a proto-Romantic movement in German literature and music taking place from the late 1760s through the early 1780s, in which individual subjectivity and, in particular, extremes of emotion were given free expression in reaction to the perceived constraints of rationalism...
". She places herself back in the time she is writing about, even during traumatic experiences like her rape in Caged Bird, to "tell the human truth" about her life. Critic Opal Moore says about Caged Bird: "... Though easily read, [it] is no 'easy read'". Angelou has stated that she plays cards to reach that place of enchantment, to access her memories more effectively. She has stated, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I’m in it—ha! It’s so delicious!" She does not find the process cathartic; rather, she has found relief in "telling the truth".
Title
When selecting a title, Angelou turned to Paul Laurence DunbarPaul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....
, an African-American poet whose works she had admired for years. Jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln
Abbey Lincoln
Anna Marie Wooldridge , better known by her stage name Abbey Lincoln, was a jazz vocalist, songwriter, and actress. Lincoln was unusual in that she wrote and performed her own compositions, expanding the expectations of jazz audiences.-Biography:Born in Chicago, Illinois, she was one of many...
suggested the title. With Shakespeare, Angelou has credited Dunbar with forming her "writing ambition". The title of the book comes from the third stanza of his poem "Sympathy":
I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart's deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings –
I know why the caged bird sings.
Plot summary
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings follows Marguerite's (called "My" or "Maya" by her brother) life from the age of three to seventeen and the struggles she faces – particularly with racismRacism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
– in the Southern United States
Southern United States
The Southern United States—commonly referred to as the American South, Dixie, or simply the South—constitutes a large distinctive area in the southeastern and south-central United States...
. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and crippled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas
Stamps, Arkansas
Stamps is a city in Lafayette County, Arkansas, United States. The population was 2,131 at the 2000 census.Stamps was the shop headquarters for the former Louisiana and Arkansas Railway until the relocation in the early 1920s to Minden, Louisiana....
. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage.
Ku Klux Klan
Ku Klux Klan, often abbreviated KKK and informally known as the Klan, is the name of three distinct past and present far-right organizations in the United States, which have advocated extremist reactionary currents such as white supremacy, white nationalism, and anti-immigration, historically...
raiders. Maya has to endure the insult of her name being changed to Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at her eighth grade graduation ceremony disparages the Black audience by suggesting that they have limited job opportunities. A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
's championship fight, but generally they feel the heavy weight of racist oppression.
A turning point in the book occurs when Maya and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears in Stamps. He takes the two children with him when he departs, but leaves them with their mother in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, probably by Maya's uncles. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone but her brother. Even after returning to Stamps, Maya remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets Mrs. Bertha Flowers, "the aristocrat of Black Stamps", who supplies her with books to encourage her love of reading. This coaxes Maya out of her shell.
Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California
San Francisco, California
San Francisco , officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the financial, cultural, and transportation center of the San Francisco Bay Area, a region of 7.15 million people which includes San Jose and Oakland...
, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School
George Washington High School (San Francisco)
George Washington High School is a public high school in Richmond District, San Francisco, California. The school is a part of the San Francisco Unified School District...
and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School. Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visits her father in southern California one summer, and has some experiences pivotal to her development. She drives a car for the first time when she must transport her intoxicated father home from an excursion to Mexico. She experiences homelessness for a short time after a fight with her father's girlfriend.
During Maya's final year of high school, she worries that she might be a lesbian
Lesbian
Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...
(which she equates with being a hermaphrodite
Hermaphrodite
In biology, a hermaphrodite is an organism that has reproductive organs normally associated with both male and female sexes.Many taxonomic groups of animals do not have separate sexes. In these groups, hermaphroditism is a normal condition, enabling a form of sexual reproduction in which both...
), and initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She becomes pregnant, and on the advice of her brother, she hides from her family until her eighth month of pregnancy in order to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth at the end of the book and begins her journey to adulthood by accepting her role as mother to her newborn son.
Style and genre
Bildungsroman
In literary criticism, bildungsroman or coming-of-age story is a literary genre which focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood , and in which character change is thus extremely important...
or coming-of-age story. Although Caged Bird is an autobiography
Autobiography
An autobiography is a book about the life of a person, written by that person.-Origin of the term:...
, critic Mary Jane Lupton compares it to George Eliot's
George Eliot
Mary Anne Evans , better known by her pen name George Eliot, was an English novelist, journalist and translator, and one of the leading writers of the Victorian era...
novel The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss
The Mill on the Floss is a novel by George Eliot , first published in three volumes in 1860 by William Blackwood. The first American edition was by Thomas Y...
. According to Lupton, the two books share the following similarities: a focus on young strong-willed heroines who have solid relationships with their brothers, an examination of the role of literature in life, and an emphasis on the importance of family and community life. Angelou's book also continues the tradition of African American autobiography. Like Richard Wright's
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
Native Son
Native Son
Native Son is a novel by American author Richard Wright. The novel tells the story of 20-year-old Bigger Thomas, an African American living in utter poverty. Bigger lived in Chicago's South Side ghetto in the 1930s...
, the protagonist in Caged Bird serves as an example of how a young African American can survive. As critic Susan Gilbert states, Angelou was reporting not one person's story, but the collective's. Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe agrees, and sees Angelou as representative of the convention in African American autobiography as a public gesture that speaks for an entire group of people.
Angelou made a deliberate attempt while writing Caged Bird to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Her use of fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development often lead reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction. Lupton insists that all of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the genre's standard structure: they are written by a single author, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, technique, and theme. In a 1983 interview with African American literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou calls her books autobiographies.
When speaking of her use of autobiography, Angelou acknowledges that she has followed the slave narrative
Slave narrative
The slave narrative is a literary form which grew out of the written accounts of enslaved Africans in Britain and its colonies, including the later United States, Canada and Caribbean nations...
tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'". Throughout the story she uses the first-person narrative voice
First-person narrative
First-person point of view is a narrative mode where a story is narrated by one character at a time, speaking for and about themselves. First-person narrative may be singular, plural or multiple as well as being an authoritative, reliable or deceptive "voice" and represents point of view in the...
customary with autobiographies, but also includes fiction-like elements, told from the perspective of a child that is "artfully recreated by an adult narrator". She uses two distinct voices, the adult writer and the child who is the focus of the book, whom Angelou calls "the Maya character". Angelou reports that maintaining the distinction between herself and "the Maya character" is "damned difficult", but "very necessary". Scholar Liliane Arensberg suggests that Angelou "retaliates for the tongue-tied child's helpless pain" by using her adult's irony
Irony
Irony is a rhetorical device, literary technique, or situation in which there is a sharp incongruity or discordance that goes beyond the simple and evident intention of words or actions...
and wit.
Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to her books – she tends to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". Her approach parallels the conventions of many African American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the US, when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection. Author Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the long tradition of African American autobiography, but insists that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form. In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton
George Plimpton
George Ames Plimpton was an American journalist, writer, editor, and actor. He is widely known for his sports writing and for helping to found The Paris Review.-Early life:...
, Angelou discussed her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs. When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about." Although Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories, she has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen states, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work". Hagen also states that Angelou "fictionalizes, to enhance interest". Angelou's editor, Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis
Robert Loomis is an executive book editor at Random House, where he has worked since 1957. He has been called "one of publishing's hall of fame editors."...
, agrees, stating that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.
Scholar Joanne M. Braxton sees Caged Bird as a representative example of the autobiographies written by African American women in the years following the civil rights movement. The book presents themes that are common in autobiography by Black American women: a celebration of Black motherhood; a criticism of racism; the importance of family; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition. Angelou introduces a unique point of view in American autobiography by revealing her life story through a narrator who is a Black female, at some points a child, and other points a mother. Writer Hilton Als
Hilton Als
Hilton Als is an American writer and theater critic who writes for The New Yorker magazine.Als is a former staff writer for The Village Voice and former editor-at-large at Vibe magazine....
calls Angelou one of the "pioneers of self-exposure", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of her personality and choices. For example, while Angelou was composing her second autobiography, Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
, she was concerned about how her readers would react to her disclosure that she had been a prostitute. Her husband Paul Du Feu talked her into publishing the book by encouraging her to "tell the truth as a writer" and to "be honest about it".
Themes
As critic Pierre A. Walker notes, when Angelou wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings at the end of the 1960s, one of the necessary and accepted features of literature was thematic unity, and one of Angelou's goals was to create a book that satisfied this criterion. The structure of the text, which resembles a series of short stories, is not chronological but rather thematic. Walker believes that Angelou succeeded in emphasizing identity, racism, rape, and literacy, despite the narrative's episodic quality. As Hagen states, she structures the book into three parts: arrival, sojourn, and departure, both geographically and psychologically.Identity
The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of male prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In the course of Caged Bird, Maya, who has been described as "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America", goes from being a victim of racism with an inferiority complex to a self-aware individual who responds to racism with dignity and a strong sense of her own identity. Feminist scholar
Feminist literary criticism
Feminist literary criticism is literary criticism informed by feminist theory, or by the politics of feminism more broadly. Its history has been broad and varied, from classic works of nineteenth-century women authors such as George Eliot and Margaret Fuller to cutting-edge theoretical work in...
Maria Lauret states that the "formation of female cultural identity" is woven into the book's narrative, setting Maya up as "a role model for Black women". African American literature scholar Dolly McPherson states that Angelou, in her demonstration of the passage from childhood to young adulthood, creatively uses "the Christian myth" and presents the themes of death, regeneration, and rebirth. Scholar Liliane Arensberg calls this presentation Angelou's "identity theme" and a major motif in Angelou's narrative. Maya's unsettled life in Caged Bird suggests her sense of self "as perpetually in the process of becoming, of dying and being reborn, in all its ramifications".
As Lauret indicates, Angelou and other female writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s used the autobiography to reimagine ways of writing about women's lives and identities in a male-dominated society. Up until this time, Black women were not depicted realistically in African American fiction and autobiography, so Angelou was one of the first Black autobiographers to present, as Cudjoe put it, "a powerful, authentic and authentic signification of [African American] womanhood in her quest for understanding and love rather than for bitterness and despair". Lauret sees a connection between Angelou's autobiographies, which Lauret calls "fictions of subjectivity" and "feminist first-person narratives", and fictional first-person narratives (such as The Women's Room
The Women's Room
The Women's Room is a novel by American feminist author Marilyn French first published in 1977.French was almost unknown among feminist circles before the publication of the book. It has been described as one of the most influential novels of the modern feminist movement...
by Marilyn French and The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook
The Golden Notebook is a 1962 novel by Doris Lessing. This book, as well as the couple that followed it, enters the realm of what Margaret Drabble in The Oxford Companion to English Literature has called Lessing's "inner space fiction", her work that explores mental and societal breakdown...
by Doris Lessing
Doris Lessing
Doris May Lessing CH is a British writer. Her novels include The Grass is Singing, The Golden Notebook, and five novels collectively known as Canopus in Argos....
) written during the same period. Both genres employ the narrator as protagonist
Protagonist
A protagonist is the main character of a literary, theatrical, cinematic, or musical narrative, around whom the events of the narrative's plot revolve and with whom the audience is intended to most identify...
and "rely upon the illusion of presence in their mode of signification".
As a displaced girl, Maya's pain is worsened by an awareness of her displacement. She is "the forgotten child", and must come to terms with "the unimaginable reality" of being unloved and unwanted; she lives in a hostile world that defines beauty in terms of whiteness and that rejects her simply because she is a Black girl. Maya internalizes the rejection she has experienced – her belief in her own ugliness was "absolute". McPherson believes that the concept of family, or what Lupton called "kinship concerns", in Angelou's books must be understood in the light of the children's displacement at the beginning of Caged Bird. Being sent away from their parents was a psychological rejection, and resulted in a quest for love, acceptance, and self-worth for both Maya and Bailey.
An incident in the book that solidifies Maya's identity is her trip to Mexico with her father, when she has to drive a car for the first time. Contrasted with her experience in Stamps, Maya is finally "in control of her fate". This experience is central to Maya's growth, as is the incident that immediately follows it, her short period of homelessness after arguing with her father's girlfriend. These two incidents give Maya a knowledge of self-determination and confirm her self-worth.
Beginning in Caged Bird, motherhood is a "prevailing theme" in Angelou's autobiographies. Scholar Mary Burgher believes that female Black autobiographers like Angelou have debunked the stereotypes of African American mothers as "breeder and matriarch", and have presented them as having "a creative and personally fulfilling role". Lupton believes that Angelou's plot construction and character development were influenced by the same mother/child motif found in the work of Harlem Renaissance
Harlem Renaissance
The Harlem Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s. At the time, it was known as the "New Negro Movement", named after the 1925 anthology by Alain Locke...
poet Jessie Fauset. For the first five years of her life, Maya thinks of herself as an orphan and finds comfort in the thought that her mother was dead. Maya's feelings for and relationship with her own mother, whom she blames for her abandonment, express themselves in ambivalence and "repressed violent aggression". For example, Maya and her brother destroy the first Christmas gifts sent by their mother. These strong feelings are not resolved until the end of the book, when Maya becomes a mother herself, and her mother finally becomes the nurturing presence for which Maya has longed. The two main maternal influences on Maya's life change as well; Vivian becomes a more active participant, while Momma becomes less effective as Maya, by becoming a mother herself, moves from childhood to adulthood.
Racism
Paul Laurence Dunbar
Paul Laurence Dunbar was a seminal African American poet of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Dunbar gained national recognition for his 1896 "Ode to Ethiopia", one poem in the collection Lyrics of Lowly Life....
poem, as a central image throughout her series of autobiographies. Like elements within a prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou's confinement resulting from racism and oppression. The caged bird metaphor also invokes the "supposed contradiction of the bird singing in the midst of its struggle". Scholar Ernece B. Kelley calls Caged Bird a "gentle indictment of white American womanhood", but Hagen disagrees, stating that the book is "a dismaying story of white dominance".
Critic Pierre A. Walker places Angelou's autobiography in the African American literature tradition of political protest. Caged Bird has been called "perhaps the most aesthetically satisfying autobiography written in the years immediately following the Civil Rights era". Angelou demonstrates, through her involvement with the black community of Stamps, as well as her presentation of vivid and realistic racist characters and "the vulgarity of white Southern attitudes toward African Americans", her developing understanding of the rules for surviving in a racist society. Angelou's autobiographies, beginning with Caged Bird, contain a sequence of lessons about resisting oppression. The sequence she describes leads Angelou, as the protagonist, from "helpless rage and indignation to forms of subtle resistance, and finally to outright and active protest".
The caged bird sings
with a fearful trill
of things unknown
but longed for still
and his tune is heard
on the distant hill
for the caged bird
sings of freedom.
-The final stanza of Maya Angelou's poem "Caged Bird"
Walker insists that Angelou's treatment of racism is what gives her autobiographies their thematic unity and underscores one of their central themes: the injustice of racism and how to fight it. The structure of the book helps to illustrate this theme. Caged Bird, like most autobiographies, begins with Angelou's earliest memories, but she relates events non-chronologically. For example, the description of the "powhitetrash" girls taunting Maya's grandmother appears in chapter five when Maya was about ten years old, two years after her rape, which occurs in chapter twelve. Maya reacts to the "powhitetrash" incident with rage, indignation, humiliation, and helplessness, but Momma teaches her how they can maintain their personal dignity and pride while dealing with racism. Walker calls Momma's way a "strategy of subtle resistance" and McPherson calls it "the dignified course of silent endurance".
In the course of her book, Angelou demonstrates that Momma's approach to coping with racism serves as a basis for actively protesting and combating racism. Momma is portrayed as a "realist" whose patience, courage, and silence ensured the survival and success of those who came after her. For example, Maya breaks the race barrier to become the first black street-car operator in San Francisco, and responds assertively to the demeaning treatment by her white employer Mrs. Cullinan. In addition, Angelou's description of the strong and cohesive black community of Stamps demonstrates how African Americans subvert repressive institutions to withstand racism. Arensberg insists that Angelou demonstrates how she, as a black child, evolves out of her "racial hatred", common in the works of many contemporary black novelists and autobiographers. At first Maya wishes that she could become white, since growing up black in white America is dangerous; later she sheds her self-loathing and embraces a strong racial identity.
Rape
It should be clear, however, that this portrayal of rape is hardly titillating or "pornographic." It raises issues of trust, truth and lie, love, the naturalness of a child's craving for human contact, language and understanding, and the confusion engendered by the power disparities that necessarily exist between children and adults.
Opal Moore
Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the autobiography, although it is presented briefly in the text. Scholar Mary Vermillion compares Angelou's treatment of rape to that of Harriet Jacobs in her autobiography Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl is a book that was published in 1861 by Harriet Jacobs, using the pen name "Linda Brent". While on one level it chronicles the experiences of Harriet Jacobs as a slave, and the various humiliations she had to endure in that unhappy state, it also deals with...
. Jacobs and Angelou both use rape as a metaphor for the suffering of African Americans; while Jacobs uses the metaphor to critique slaveholding culture, Angelou uses it to first internalize, then challenge, twentieth-century racist conceptions of the black female body (namely, that the black female is physically unattractive). Rape, according to Vermillion, "represents the black girl's difficulties in controlling, understanding, and respecting both her body and her words".
Arensberg notes that Maya's rape is connected to the theme of death in Caged Bird, as Mr. Freeman threatens to kill Maya's brother Bailey if she tells anyone about the rape. After Maya lies during Freeman's trial, stating that the rape was the first time he touched her inappropriately, Freeman is murdered and Maya sees her words as a bringer of death. As a result, she resolves never to speak to anyone other than Bailey. Angelou connects the violation of her body and the devaluation of her words through the depiction of her self-imposed, five-year-long silence. As Angelou later stated, "I thought if I spoke, my mouth would just issue out something that would kill people, randomly, so it was better not to talk".
Maya's rape demonstrates how as a black woman, she is violated as she moves from childhood to adolescence. African American literature scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe calls its depiction "a burden": a demonstration of "the manner in which the Black female is violated in her tender years and ... the 'unnecessary insult' of Southern girlhood in her movement to adolescence". Vermillion goes further, maintaining that a black woman who writes about her rape risks reinforcing negative stereotypes about her race and gender. When asked decades later how she was able to survive such trauma, Angelou explained it by stating, "I can't remember a time when I wasn't loved by somebody." When asked by the same interviewer why she wrote about the experience, she indicated that she wanted to demonstrate the complexities of rape. She also wanted to prevent it from happening to someone else, so that anyone who had been raped might gain understanding and not blame herself for it.
Literacy
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
, are "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". Lupton compares Angelou's informal education with the education of other black writers of the twentieth century, who did not earn official degrees and depended upon the "direct instruction of African American cultural forms". Angelou's quest for learning and literacy parallels "the central myth of black culture in America": that freedom and literacy are connected. Angelou is influenced by writers introduced to her by Mrs. Flowers during her self-imposed muteness, including Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective...
and William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare
William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...
. Angelou states, early in Caged Bird, that she, as the Maya character, "met and fell in love with William Shakespeare". Critic Mary Vermillion sees a connection between Maya's rape and Shakespeare's "The Rape of Lucrece
The Rape of Lucrece
The Rape of Lucrece is a narrative poem by William Shakespeare about the legendary Lucretia. In his previous narrative poem, Venus and Adonis , Shakespeare had included a dedicatory letter to his patron, the Earl of Southampton, in which he promised to write a "graver work"...
", which Maya memorizes and recites when she regains her speech. Vermillion maintains that Maya finds comfort in the poem's identification with suffering. Maya finds novels and their characters complete and meaningful, so she uses them to make sense of her bewildering world. She is so involved in her fantasy world of books that she even uses them as a way to cope with her rape. As Angelou writes in Caged Bird, "...I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet
The Green Hornet
The Green Hornet is an American radio and television masked vigilante created by George W. Trendle and Fran Striker, with input from radio director James Jewell, in 1936. Since his radio debut in the 1930s, the Green Hornet has appeared in numerous serialized dramas in a wide variety of media...
would bust in the door and save me".
According to Walker, the power of words is another theme that appears repeatedly in Caged Bird. For example, Maya chooses to not speak after her rape because she is afraid of the destructive power of words. Mrs. Flowers, by introducing her to classic literature and poetry, teaches her about the positive power of language and empowers Maya to speak again. The importance of both the spoken and written word also appears repeatedly in Caged Bird and in all of Angelou's autobiographies. Referring to the importance of literacy and methods of effective writing, Angelou once advised Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey is an American media proprietor, talk show host, actress, producer and philanthropist. Winfrey is best known for her self-titled, multi-award-winning talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011...
in an 1993 interview to "do as West Africans do ... listen to the deep talk", or the "utterances existing beneath the obvious". As McPherson says, "If there is one stable element in Angelou's youth it is [a] dependence upon books". The public library is a "quiet refuge" to which Maya retreats when she experiences crisis. Hagen describes Angelou as a "natural storyteller", with an ear for dialogue that reflect someone who is a good listener with a rich oral heritage. Hagen also insists that Angelou's years of muteness provided her with this skill.
Angelou was also powerfully affected by slave narratives, spirituals, poetry, and other autobiographies. Angelou read through the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
twice as a young child, and memorized many passages from it. African American spirituality, as represented by Angelou's grandmother, has influenced all of Angelou's writings, in the activities of the church community she first experiences in Stamps, in the sermonizing, and in scripture. Hagen goes on to say that in addition to being influenced by rich literary form, Angelou has also been influenced by oral traditions. In Caged Bird, Mrs. Flowers encourages her to listen carefully to "Mother Wit", which Hagen defines as the collective wisdom of the African American community as expressed in folklore
Folklore
Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...
and humor.
Angelou's humor in Caged Bird and in all her autobiographies is drawn from black folklore and is used to demonstrate that in spite of severe racism and oppression, they thrive and are, as Hagen states, "a community of song and laughter and courage". Hagen states that Angelou is able to make an indictment of institutionalized racism as she laughs at her flaws and the flaws of her community and "balances stories of black endurance of oppression against white myths and misperceptions". Hagan goes on to characterize Caged Bird as a "blues genre autobiography" because it uses elements of blues music. These elements include the act of testimony when speaking of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations. Hagan also sees elements of African American sermonizing in Caged Bird. Angelou's use of African American oral traditions creates a sense of community in her readers, and identifies its African American segment.
Critical reception and sales
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the most highly acclaimed of Angelou's autobiographies. The other volumes are regularly judged and compared to her first. With its publication, Angelou became known, according to the New York Times Book Review, as an author who "writes like a song, and like the truth. The wisdom, rue and humor of her storytelling are borne on a lilting rhythm completely her own." Angelou's friend and mentor, James BaldwinJames Baldwin (writer)
James Arthur Baldwin was an American novelist, essayist, playwright, poet, and social critic.Baldwin's essays, for instance "Notes of a Native Son" , explore palpable yet unspoken intricacies of racial, sexual, and class distinctions in Western societies, most notably in mid-20th century America,...
, maintained that her book "liberates the reader into life" and called it "a Biblical study of life in the midst of death".
National Book Award
The National Book Awards are a set of American literary awards. Started in 1950, the Awards are presented annually to American authors for literature published in the current year. In 1989 the National Book Foundation, a nonprofit organization which now oversees and manages the National Book...
in 1970; in 1995, Angelou's publishing company, Bantam Books
Bantam Books
Bantam Books is an American publishing house owned entirely by Random House, the German media corporation subsidiary of Bertelsmann; it is an imprint of the Random House Publishing Group. It was formed in 1945 by Walter B. Pitkin, Jr., Sidney B. Kramer, and Ian and Betty Ballantine...
, recognized her for having the longest-running record (two years) on The New York Times paperback nonfiction bestseller list
New York Times Best Seller list
The New York Times Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. It is published weekly in The New York Times Book Review magazine, which is published in the Sunday edition of The New York Times and as a stand-alone publication...
. In addition, Caged Bird has been a Book of the Month Club and an Ebony Book Club selection.
Critic Robert A. Gross called Caged Bird "more than a tour de force of language". Edmund Fuller insisted that Angelou's "artistry and intellectual range" were apparent in how she told her story. Caged Bird catapulted Angelou to international fame and critical acclaim, and "heralded the success of other now prominent [black women] writers". Other reviewers have praised Angelou's use of language in the book, including critic E.M. Guiney, who reported that Caged Bird was "one of the best autobiographies of its kind that I have read". Critic R. A. Gross praised Angelou for her use of "rich, dazzling images".
By the mid-1980s, Caged Bird had gone through twenty hardback printings and thirty-two paperback printings. Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning
On the Pulse of Morning
On the Pulse of Morning is a poem by Maya Angelou. She read it at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton on January 20, 1993. With her public recitation, Angelou became the second poet in history to read a poem at a presidential inauguration...
" at President Bill Clinton's
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
1993 inauguration; in the following week, sales of the paperback version of Caged Bird and her other works rose by 300–600 percent. Bantam Books reprinted 400,000 copies of her books to meet demand. Random House
Random House
Random House, Inc. is the largest general-interest trade book publisher in the world. It has been owned since 1998 by the German private media corporation Bertelsmann and has become the umbrella brand for Bertelsmann book publishing. Random House also has a movie production arm, Random House Films,...
, which published Angelou's hardcover books and the poem later that year, reported that they sold more of her books in January 1993 than they did in all of 1992, marking a 1,200 percent increase. The book has never been out of print since its publication.
In one of the few negative reviews of Caged Bird, author Francine Prose
Francine Prose
Francine Prose is an American writer. Since March 2007 she has been the president of PEN American Center. She graduated from Radcliffe College in 1968 and received a Guggenheim fellowship in 1991....
considers its inclusion in the high school curriculum as partly responsible for the "dumbing down" of American society. Prose calls the book "manipulative melodrama", and considers Angelou's writing style an inferior example of "poetic" prose in memoir. She accuses Angelou of combining a dozen metaphors in one paragraph and for "obscuring ideas that could be expressed so much more simply and felicitously".
Influence
When Caged Bird was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African American women who was able to publicly discuss her personal life. Up to that point, black women writers were so marginalized that they were unable to present themselves as central characters. Writer Julian Mayfield insists that Angelou's autobiography set a precedent not only for other black women writers, but also for the genre of autobiography as a whole. Through the writing of her autobiography, Angelou became recognized as a respected spokesperson for blacks and women. Caged Bird made her "without a doubt, ... America's most visible black woman autobiographer". Although Als considers Caged Bird an important contribution to the increase of black feminist writings in the 1970s, he attributes its success less to its originality than to "its resonance in the prevailing ZeitgeistZeitgeist
Zeitgeist is "the spirit of the times" or "the spirit of the age."Zeitgeist is the general cultural, intellectual, ethical, spiritual or political climate within a nation or even specific groups, along with the general ambiance, morals, sociocultural direction, and mood associated with an era.The...
", of its time, at the end of the American Civil Rights movement. Angelou's writings, more interested in self-revelation than in politics or feminism, freed many other women writers to "open themselves up without shame to the eyes of the world".
Angelou's autobiographies, especially the first volume, have been used in narrative and multicultural approaches to teacher education
Teacher education
Teacher education refers to the policies and procedures designed to equip prospective teachers with the knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and skills they require to perform their tasks effectively in the classroom, school and wider community....
. Dr. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University
George Washington University
The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...
, has used Caged Bird and Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name
Gather Together in My Name is an autobiography by Maya Angelou. It is the second book in Angelou's series of six autobiographies, and takes place immediately following the events described in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Written three years after Caged Bird, the book "depicts a single...
to train teachers how to "talk about racism" in their classrooms. Due to Angelou's use of understatement, self-mockery, humor, and irony, readers of Angelou's autobiographies wonder what she "left out" and are unsure about how to respond to the events Angelou describes. These techniques force white readers to explore their feelings about race and their own "privileged status". Glazier found that although critics have focused on where Angelou fits within the genre of African American autobiography and her literary techniques, readers react to her storytelling with "surprise, particularly when [they] enter the text with certain expectations about the genre of autobiography".
Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 book, Stories of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed the events in Caged Bird to illustrate resiliency in children. Challener insists that Angelou's book provides a "useful framework" for exploring the obstacles many children like Maya face and how a community helps these children succeed as Angelou did. Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has used Caged Bird to supplement scientific theory and research in the instruction of child development
Child development
Child development stages describe theoretical milestones of child development. Many stage models of development have been proposed, used as working concepts and in some cases asserted as nativist theories....
topics such as the development of self-concept and self-esteem, ego resilience, industry versus inferiority, effects of abuse, parenting styles, sibling and friendship relations, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and identity formation in adolescence. He has called the book a "highly effective" tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.
Censorship
Caged Bird elicits criticism for its honest depiction of rape, its exploration of the ugly specter of racism in America, its recounting of the circumstances of Angelou's own out-of-wedlock teen pregnancy, and its humorous poking at the foibles of the institutional church.Opal Moore
Caged Bird has been criticized by many parents, causing it to be removed from school curricula and library shelves. According to the National Coalition Against Censorship
National Coalition Against Censorship
The National Coalition Against Censorship , founded in 1974, is an alliance of 50 national non-profit organizations, including literary, artistic, religious, educational, professional, labor, and civil liberties groups...
, parents and schools have objected to the book's depictions of lesbianism, premarital cohabitation, pornography, and violence. Some have been critical of its sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and irreverent religious depictions. The book is challenging for young readers and some adults, so educators have stressed the importance of preparing teachers to introduce the book effectively. Caged Bird appears third on the American Library Association
American Library Association
The American Library Association is a non-profit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with more than 62,000 members....
list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–1999. It is fifth on the ALA's list of the ten most challenged books of the 21st century (2000–2005), and is one of the ten books most frequently banned from high school and junior high school libraries and classrooms.
Film version
A made-for-TV movieTelevision movie
A television film is a feature film that is a television program produced for and originally distributed by a television network, in contrast to...
version of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was filmed in Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg, Mississippi
Vicksburg is a city in Warren County, Mississippi, United States. It is the only city in Warren County. It is located northwest of New Orleans on the Mississippi and Yazoo rivers, and due west of Jackson, the state capital. In 1900, 14,834 people lived in Vicksburg; in 1910, 20,814; in 1920,...
and aired on April 28, 1979 on CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
. Angelou and Leonora Thuna wrote the screenplay; the movie was directed by Fielder Cook
Fielder Cook
Fielder Cook was an American television and film director, producer, and writer whose 1971 television movie The Homecoming: A Christmas Story spawned the series The Waltons....
. Constance Good played young Maya. Also appearing were actors Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle
Esther Rolle was an American actress. She was perhaps best known for her portrayal of Florida Evans on the CBS television sitcom Maude and its spin-off series Good Times.-Biography:...
, Roger E. Mosley
Roger E. Mosley
Roger Earl Mosley is an American actor best known for his role as the helicopter pilot Theodore "T.C." Calvin on the long running television series, Magnum, P.I., which starred Tom Selleck as the title character.-Early life:...
, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee
Ruby Dee is an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist, and activist, perhaps best known for co-starring in the film A Raisin in the Sun and the film American Gangster for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress.-Early years:Dee was born Ruby...
, and Madge Sinclair
Madge Sinclair
Madge Dorita Sinclair was a Jamaican American character actress.-Early years:Sinclair was born Madge Dorita Walters in Kingston, Jamaica, to Herbert and Jemima Walters. She was a teacher in Jamaica until 1968 when she left for New York to pursue her career in acting.-Career:In 1978, she starred in...
. Two scenes in the movie differed from events described in the book. Angelou added a scene between Maya and Uncle Willie after the Joe Louis
Joe Louis
Joseph Louis Barrow , better known as Joe Louis, was the world heavyweight boxing champion from 1937 to 1949. He is considered to be one of the greatest heavyweights of all time...
fight; in it, he expresses his feelings of redemption after Louis defeats a white opponent. Angelou also presents her eighth grade graduation differently in the film. In the book, Henry Reed delivers the valedictory speech and leads the black audience in the Negro national anthem. In the movie, Maya conducts these activities.