Published in 1970, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings won critical acclaim and was nominated for the National Book Award. Wrote Critic Sidonie Ann Smith in Southern Humanities Review, "Angelou's genius as a writer is her ability to recapture the texture of the way of life IN the texture of its idioms, its Idiosyncratic vocabulary and especially in its process of image-making." This book, the first of five in a series describing her life and her continuing search for self-realization, was the best received of the collection. Some posit that the reason is that in her subsequent autobiographical novels, Angelou-who went through many ups and downs in her life-was a less appealing character, though her lifelong achievements thus far seem to belie such criticism.
Critical analysis of Angelou's autobiographical prose has mainly focused on Caged.....
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