¶ … Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, she illustrated her coming of age as an intelligent but unconfident black girl in the American South during the 1930s and afterwards in California during the 1940s. Angelou's parents' divorce when she was three years old and sent her and her older brother, Bailey, to stay with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, which was rural Stamps, Arkansas. Annie, whom they call Momma, ran the only store in the black section of Stamps and became the most important moral figure in Angelou's childhood.
Within her book, there are many themes that are brought up throughout the course of the story. Since the book is about a black girl growing up during a time that blacks did not have equal rights, naturally, the major theme would be racism and segregation which can be related to modern society. Therefore, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a detailed story that illustrates the struggle of being black during a time when it was not accepted to be of a different race, which can be reflected, in modern society.
Angelou wrote about her happenings growing up as a black girl in the rural south and in the urban centers of St. Louis, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. She had an extraordinary degree of inquisitiveness and perceptiveness. As Angelou was disturbed by her disarticulation from her biological parents and her impression that she was ugly, she often separated herself, turning to books...
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings One of the lasting moments in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the explicit rape scene in the novel. In the story, the young narrator is raped by her mother's boyfriend. This moment in the book has been mislabeled as a form of child pornography, but anyone reading the story can testify that this is not a moment told in
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been widely classified as an African-American autobiography, which chronicles the experiences of a young, black girl in the America of the 1930s. While undoubtedly the work is a valuable contribution to the genre of African-American history, describing as it does the plight of black women living during a time of racial and sexual oppression, it
In McTeague, Norris applied the caged bird motif to illustrate the protagonist's chained existence that was at the mercy of naturalistic forces. As the canary is moved from place to place, so is the protagonist forced to move from one experience to another until he dies. It symbolizes the protagonist's life and death experiences. When McTeague finally dies near the end as he is handcuffed with a corpse, we see
This attempt at banning this book cannot be seen as anything but another example of prejudice and racism, this time against a woman who is attempting to share her life and warn other young girls at the same time. Probably one of the most eye-opening parts of the book is when Angelou acknowledges that for decades, blacks in the South acquiesced to whites simply to survive, and they taught these
Maya Angelou has several points in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Her primary point involves both the strength and the beauty in inherent to the human spirit. Despite all adversity, her book and life story stresses, greatness can still be accomplished. It is impossible to read I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings without a sense of what the girl in the book would become; not only does
San Francisco is a place of greater opportunity than anywhere in the South offered her; there are fewer freedoms than she discovered in Mexico or in the junkyard, perhaps, but these restrictions are attendant on the opportunities afforded her. Angelou's ability to imagine those opportunities carried on the sea breeze or just over the crest of each successive hill of the San Francisco marks her successful journey in the
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