I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Summary
Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou Beginning three years after Maya Angelou's birth in 1928, her autobiography unfolds against the backdrop of America between the wars. Within the work... Read more

Maya Angelou (born 1928)--author, poet, playwright, stage and screen performer, and director--is best known for her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), which recalls a young African... Read more

Maya Angelou's literary significance rests upon her exceptional ability to tell her life story as both a human being and a black American woman in the twentieth century. Four serial autobiographical v... Read more

In the following essay, McMurry discusses the metaphor of the cage in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As a songwriter, journalist, playwright, poet, fiction and screen-writer, Maya Angelou is often a... Read more

In the following essay, Froula considers the impact of female autobiographies—such as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Alice Walker's The Color Purple—on literary tradition and... Read more

In the following essay, Moore addresses several of the major criticisms against I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, including the charge that the story is too honest and brutal for young audiences. I bri... Read more

In the following excerpt, Hagen traces the critical reaction to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The title of Angelou's first long book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), was suggested by... Read more

Although Marguerite Johnson experiences an amazingly difficult childhood where she is often displaced and even raped at a young age, she is able to somehow overcome these adversities and succeed i... Read more

Being a black girl who feels displaced and isolated, Marguerite Johnson faced a lot of arduous experiences during her youth in the southern state of Arkansas. Problems such as racism, sexism, and hate... Read more

It was once said that the title of a poem can capture the meaning of the piece better than the piece itself. This is the case in May Angelou's autobiography titled I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, ab... Read more

Maya Angelou probably chose the title I know why the caged bird sings for her memoir because the poem it self is about the struggles of life and how you should keep perseverance, hope and strive bur... Read more

"During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. He was my first white love," a motif, one of many literary techniques that Maya uses to pull her audience in and enthral... Read more