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 modern culture.

In the following essay, McPherson discusses I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as a record of Angelou's discovery of her own interior world and identity.

In the following essay, Walker evaluates the political nature and influence of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

In the following essay, Arensberg asserts that despite the often witty tone of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the primary theme of the narrative is death.

In the following excerpt, Hagen traces the critical reaction to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

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.

In the following essay, McMurry discusses the metaphor of the cage in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

In the following essay, Loos examines the implications of Marguerite's muteness in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings] is a poetic counterpart for the more scholarly [Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South by Charles S. Johnson]. For it is an autobiographical novel about a "too big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil" … scratching out the early outlines of self in a small Arkansas town. Miss Angelou confidently reaches back in memory to pull out the painful childhood times:...