I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the course of "Caged Bird", Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice.
Introduction
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Introduction
Maya Angelou Maya Angelou American writer and poet Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou.
when was i know why the caged bird sings poem written
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1969
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who was the author?
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Maya is so devastated and traumatized, she chooses to not speak for five years. She gets her voice back when someone asks her to read one of her poems in public.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mr. Freeman
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in a seven-volume series, it is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the course of "Caged Bird", Maya transforms from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Introduction
When selecting a title, Angelou turned to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet whose works she had admired for years. Jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln suggested the title. According to Lyman B. Hagen, the title pulls Angelou's readers into the book while reminding them that it is possible to both lose control of one's life and to have one's freedom taken from them. Angelou has credited Dunbar, along with Shakespeare, with forming her "writing ambition". The title of the book comes from the third stanza of Dunbar's 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Title
The valedictorian of Maya's eighth grade class. He makes up for Mr. Donleavy's discouragement by leading the audience in "Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing", the "Negro national anthem".
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Henry Reed
Also in 1968, inspired at a dinner party she attended with Baldwin, cartoonist Jules Feiffer, and his wife Judy, and challenged by Random House editor Robert Loomis, she wrote her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", published in 1969. This brought her international recognition and acclaim.
Maya Angelou | Africa to "Caged Bird": 1961–69
When he witnesses the murder of a black man by a group of white men, he is confused and unable to understand their hatred.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Bailey Johnson Jr
A white man, he is the guest speaker at Maya's eighth grade graduation. He puts a pall over the ceremony and crushes the educational dreams of the audience by insinuating that black students are only capable of becoming athletes.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mr. Donleavy
She goes from feeling shame about her race and appearance to feeling pride, in spite of experiences of racism and trauma. She is raped at the age of eight by her mother's boyfriend and responds by choosing not to speak for five years. She is brought out of her muteness by Mrs. Bertha Flowers, who introduces her to great literature.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Marguerite Johnson ("Maya")
Momma's neighbor, and the only black man Maya has seen whose trousers match his jackets. She and Bailey admire him because he does not go to church, which makes him "courageous".
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mr. McElroy
Angelou returned to the same poem she based the title of "Caged Bird" upon for the title of "A Song Flung Up to Heaven," from the third stanza of the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem "Sympathy". Along with Shakespeare, Angelou has credited Dunbar with forming her "writing ambition". The caged bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings. 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.
A Song Flung Up to Heaven | Title
He has called the book a highly effective tool for providing real-life examples of these psychological concepts.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Influence
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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Rape
Walker calls Momma's way a "strategy of subtle resistance" and McPherson calls it "the dignified course of silent endurance".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Racism
Later books in the series include "Gather Together in My Name" (1974), "Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas" (1976), "The Heart of a Woman" (1981), "All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes" (1986), "A Song Flung Up to Heaven" (2002), and "Mom & Me & Mom" (2013, at the age of 85). Critics have often judged Angelou's later autobiographies "in light of the first", and "Caged Bird" generally receives the highest praise.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Background
A member of the Black church in Stamps. She is not always able to come to services, but when she does, she shouts as loud as possible to make up for her absences. Many humorous church-related anecdotes focus on her and her behavior. Also, one of the most comical chapters in the book.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Sister Monroe
Maya's teacher at George Washington High School in San Francisco. "A rare educator", she is white but shows no favoritism to her students based upon their race. Angelou states that she is "the only teacher I remembered", and probably the only white person who befriended her.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Miss Kirwin
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", the 1969 autobiography about the early years of African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou, features many characters, including Angelou as a child, which she has called "the Maya character". The first in a six-volume series, "Caged Bird" is a coming-of-age story that illustrates how strength of character and a love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when three-year-old Maya and her older brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and ends when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the course of "Caged Bird", Maya transforms from a victim of racism into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Introduction
Angelou's treatment of racism provides a thematic unity to the book. Literacy and the power of words help young Maya cope with her bewildering world; books become her refuge as she works through her trauma.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Introduction
A white dentist who refuses to treat Maya's tooth pain, in spite of his debt to Momma, incurred during the Great Depression. He states that he would rather put his "hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's". Momma reacts to this with passivity, while Maya is horrified and dreams up an elaborate fantasy about Momma threatening the racist dentist.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Dentist Lincoln
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, according to critic Pierre A. Walker, was thematic unity. One of Angelou's goals was to create a book that satisfied this criterion, in order to achieve her political purposes, which were to demonstrate how to resist racism in America. The structure of the text, which resembles a series of short stories, is not chronological but rather thematic. Walker, in his 1993 article about "Caged Bird", "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form", focuses on the book's structure, and describes how it supports her presentation of racism.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Form
Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to her books – she tends to "diverge from the conventional notion of autobiography as truth". In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton, Angelou discussed "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs, stating, "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."
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Introduction
Bailey Sr.'s pretentious girlfriend, who becomes jealous of Maya. After a violent argument, Maya runs away from her father's home and is homeless for a short while.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Dolores
A "repulsive church official" who visits Stamps every 3 months. Maya and Bailey despise him because he is obese and never remembers their names, and because he eats the best chicken pieces at Sunday dinner. One Sunday, Sister Monroe is so inspired by his preaching that she hits him over the head with her purse; his teeth fall out and onto the floor near Maya, which results in Maya and Bailey's uncontrollable laughter and subsequent beating by Uncle Willie.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Reverend Thomas
However, Hagen notes that instead of beginning "Caged Bird" chronologically, with Maya and Bailey's arrival in Stamps, Angelou begins the book much later chronologically by recounting an embarrassing experience at church, an incident that demonstrates Maya's diminished sense of self, insecurity, and lack of status. Hagen explains that Angelou's purpose is to demonstrate Maya's journey from insecurity to her feelings of worth gained by becoming a mother at the end of the book.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Form
Three white rural girls who attempt to humiliate and intimidate Momma in front of her store when they taunt and expose themselves to her. Momma reacts by passively humming a spiritual, while Maya, watching from inside the store, weeps with shame and humiliation.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | "Powhitetrash" girls
Maya internalizes the rejection she has experienced – her belief in her own ugliness was "absolute". McPherson believes that the concept of family, or what she calls "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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Identity
Vivian Baxter's boyfriend, he lives with Vivian and her family in St. Louis when Maya and Bailey are sent there to be with their mother. At first, he is a father substitute for Maya, who is hungry to be accepted by a male. He takes advantage of this by raping her, when she is eight years old, and then threatens to kill Bailey if she told anyone about it. Bailey encourages Maya to disclose what has happened, and Mr. Freeman goes to trial. He is sentenced to one year and one day, but is released, anyway. Four days later he is found murdered, probably by Maya's uncles.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mr. Freeman
A made-for-TV movie version of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was filmed in Mississippi and aired on April 28, 1979, on CBS. Angelou and Leonora Thuna wrote the screenplay; the movie was directed by Fielder Cook. Constance Good played young Maya. Also appearing were actors Esther Rolle, Roger E. Mosley, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, and Madge Sinclair. 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 fight; in it, he expresses his feelings of redemption and hope after Louis defeats a white opponent.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Film version
Freeman. He is found guilty during the trial, but escapes jail time and is murdered, presumably 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 encourages her through books and communication to regain her voice and soul. This coaxes Maya out of her shell. Later, Momma decides to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in Stamps. Maya attends George Washington High School and studies dance and drama on a scholarship at the California Labor School.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot summary
"Caged Bird" appeared third on the American Library Association (ALA) list of the 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–2000, sixth on the ALA's 2000–2009 list, and one of the ten books most frequently banned from high school and junior high school libraries and classrooms.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Censorship
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. She shared the manuscript with her friend, writer Jessica Mitford, before submitting it for publication. Angelou subsequently wrote six additional autobiographies, 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, and back to the US, from the beginnings of World War II to King's assassination. Like "Caged Bird", the events in these books are episodic and crafted as a series of short stories, yet do not follow a strict chronology.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Background
"Why do you weep?" inquired the young siskin of the old, "You're more comfortable in this cage than out in the cold." "You were born caged," said the elder, "this was your morrow; "I was free, now I'm caged—hence the cause of my sorrow."
Fables and Parables | Birds in a Cage
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. Scholar Joanne M. Braxton sees "Caged Bird" as "the fully developed black female autobiographical form that began to emerge in the 1940s and 1950s". 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Style and genre
Maya's employer when she is ten years old. She insists upon calling her "Mary" or "Margaret". Maya is unable to tolerate this because "whites called black people too many other names", so Maya deliberately tries to get fired. She finally succeeds by breaking Mrs. Cullinan's prized china.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mrs. Viola Cullinan
"A Bird in a Gilded Cage" is a song composed by Arthur J. Lamb and Harry Von Tilzer. It was a sentimental ballad (or tear-jerker) that became one of the most popular songs of 1900, reportedly selling more than two million copies in sheet music. Jere Mahoney (Edison) and Steve Porter (Columbia) recorded two early popular versions of this song.
A Bird in a Gilded Cage | Introduction
At first, Angelou intended to return to poetry and play-writing after completing "Caged Bird" and write no more autobiographies, but she chose the genre as her primary mode of expression because of its challenge and so that she could "change it, to make it bigger, richer, finer, and more inclusive in the twentieth century". In a 1989 interview, she stated, "I think I am the only serious writer who has chosen the autobiographical form to carry my work, my expression". As she told journalist George Plimpton during a 1990 interview, "Autobiography is awfully seductive; it’s wonderful". She also told Plimpton that like the tradition begun by Frederick Douglass in slave narratives, she used the literary technique of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying I meaning 'we'".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Style and genre
Angelou was challenged by her friend author James Baldwin, and her editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that was also a piece of literature. Reviewers often categorize "Caged Bird" as autobiographical fiction because Angelou uses thematic development and other techniques common to 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Introduction
Stamps, Arkansas, as depicted in "Caged Bird", has very little "social ambiguity": it is a racist world divided between Black and white, male and female. Als characterizes the division as "good and evil", and notes how Angelou's witness of the evil in her society, which was directed at Black women, shaped Angelou's young life and informed her views into adulthood. Angelou uses the metaphor of a bird struggling to escape its cage, described in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, as a prominent symbol throughout her series of autobiographies. Like elements within a prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou's confinement resulting from racism and oppression.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Racism
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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Film version
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"; Hagen expands it further, stating that the book is "a dismaying story of white dominance". "Caged Bird" has been called "perhaps the most aesthetically satisfying autobiography written in the years immediately following the Civil Rights era". Critic Pierre A. Walker expresses a similar sentiment, and places it in the African-American literature tradition of political protest. 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Racism
Poet James Bertolino asserts that "Caged Bird" "is one of the essential books produced by our culture". He insists that "[w]e should all read it, especially our children". It was nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, has never been out of print, and has been published in many languages. It has been a Book of the Month Club selection and an Ebony Book Club selection. In 2011, "Time Magazine" placed the book in its list of 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. Critic Robert A. Gross called "Caged Bird" "a "tour de force" of language".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Critical reception and sales
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an American television film based on the autobiography of the same name by Maya Angelou, first aired April 28, 1979 on CBS. Angelou and Leonora Thuna wrote the screenplay, and the movie was directed by Fielder Cook. Constance Good played the young Maya Angelou. Also appearing were Esther Rolle, Roger E. Mosley, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, and Madge Sinclair. Filming took place in Vicksburg, Mississippi. The movie traces Maya's life from when she and her brother move in with their grandmother to the trauma of being raped as a young girl by one of her mother's boyfriends and the several years of silence that came after the attack.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (film) | Introduction
The Bird in a Cage, or The Beauties is a Caroline era comedy written by James Shirley, first published in 1633. The play is notable, even among Shirley's plays, for its lushness — what one critic has called "gay romanticism run mad."
The Bird in a Cage | Introduction
As Lupton points out, all of Angelou's autobiographies, especially "Caged Bird" and its immediate sequel "Gather Together in My Name", 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 and William Shakespeare.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Literacy
Before writing "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" at the age of forty, Angelou had a long and varied career, holding jobs such as composer, singer, actor, civil rights worker, journalist, and educator. In the late 1950s, she joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where she met a number of important African-American authors, including her friend and mentor James Baldwin. After hearing civil rights leader 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Background
He survives, fortunately, and returns to prison after being hospitalized and making a full recovery. Back at the prison, Marge finally visits Dwight, who gives her a flattened dandelion encased in a bar of soap he had carved for her with a message on the back intending to recruit her in helping him attempt another prison break. Marge does not agree to the escape attempt and Dwight, although saddened, says she can keep the token.
I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot
Webster's "We think caged birds sing, when indeed they cry" is the novel's epigraph: the younger generation, apparently privileged but in reality trapped by the legacy of war and class, were singing captives. The novel ends with a note of liberation: Hal and Roden and Francis, like characters in Chekhov, will now have to do some real work; Stella must marry where she may; Caroline too will have to find work, though trained up to nothing by her upbringing.
E. B. C. Jones | "The Singing Captives" (1921)
"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 racism – in the Southern United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their paternal grandmother (Momma) and disabled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' abandonment throughout the book – they travel alone and are labeled like baggage. Many of the problems Maya encounters in her childhood stem from the overt racism of her white neighbors.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot summary
Many of the poems in "Shaker "focus on survival despite threatened freedom, lost love, and defeated dreams. Over half of them are love poems, and emphasize the inevitable loss of love. "Caged Bird", which refers to Angelou's first autobiography, is contained in this volume.
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? | Introduction
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 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (film) | Introduction
The Caged Bird is a 1913 American silent short drama film, produced by the Thanhouser Company, and starring William Garwood and Marguerite Snow.
The Caged Bird | Introduction
"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is the most highly acclaimed of Angelou's autobiographies. The other volumes in her series of seven autobiographies are judged and compared to "Caged Bird." It became a bestseller immediately after it was published. Angelou's friend and mentor, James Baldwin, maintained that her book "liberates the reader into life" and called it "a Biblical study of life in the midst of death". According to Angelou's biographers, "Readers, especially women, and in particular Black women, took the book to heart". By the end of 1969, critics had placed Angelou in the tradition of other Black autobiographers.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Critical reception and sales
Angelou uses the metaphor of a bird struggling to escape its cage described in the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem "Sympathy" throughout all of her autobiographies; she uses the metaphor in the titles of both "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" and her sixth autobiography "A Song Flung Up to Heaven". Like elements within a prison narrative, the "caged bird" represents Angelou's confinement resulting from racism and oppression. This metaphor also invokes the "supposed contradiction of the bird singing in the midst of its struggle". Reviewer Hilton Als observed that Angelou's witnessing of the evil in her society, as directed towards Black women, shaped Angelou's young life and informed her views into adulthood.
Themes in Maya Angelou's autobiographies | "Caged Bird" and "Gather Together"
Before graduating, she becomes the first Black female cable car 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot summary
She worked for several years in Ghana, West Africa, as a journalist, actress, and educator. She was invited back to the US by Malcolm X to work for him shortly before his assassination in 1965. In 1968, King asked her to organize a march, but he too was assassinated on April 4, which also happened to be her birthday. For many years, Angelou responded to King's murder by not celebrating her birthday, instead choosing to meet with, call, or send flowers to his widow, Coretta Scott King. Angelou 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 and his wife Judy in late 1968.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Background
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" by Marilyn French and "The Golden Notebook" by Doris Lessing) written during the same period. As French and Lessing do in their novels, Angelou employs the narrator as protagonist and depends 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Identity
The book ends with Angelou at "the threshold of her literary career", writing the opening lines to her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". As she had begun to do in "Caged Bird", and continued throughout her series, Angelou upheld the long tradition of African-American autobiography. At the same time she made a deliberate attempt to challenge the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre. Most reviewers agreed that the book was made up of a series of vignettes. By the time "Song" was written in 2002, sixteen years after her previous autobiography, Angelou had experienced great fame and recognition as an author and poet.
A Song Flung Up to Heaven | Introduction
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", 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, writing in "Caged Bird", "...I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet would bust in the door and save me".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Literacy
The song describes the sad life of a beautiful woman who has married for money instead of love. Its lyrics are as follows: The ballroom was filled with fashion's throng, It shone with a thousand lights, And there was a woman who passed along,
A Bird in a Gilded Cage | Synopsis
The week after Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" at President Bill Clinton's 1993 inauguration, sales of the paperback version of "Caged Bird" and her other works rose by 300–600 percent. "Caged Bird" had sold steadily since its publication, but it increased by 500 percent. The 16-page publication of "On the Pulse of Morning" became a best-seller, and the recording of the poem was awarded a Grammy Award. The Bantam Books edition of "Caged Bird" was a bestseller for 36 weeks, and they had to reprint 400,000 copies of her books to meet demand. Random House, 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Critical reception and sales
A Summer Bird-Cage is the 1963 debut novel by Margaret Drabble published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. The title of the novel is taken from a quotation from the play "The White Devil" by John Webster: ‘"Tis just like a summer bird-cage in a garden: the birds that are without despair to get in, and the birds within despair and are in a consumption for fear they shall never get out."
A Summer Bird-Cage | Introduction
Maya and Bailey's uncle and Annie Henderson's son, he became disabled at the age of three when a babysitter dropped him. He walks with a cane. Early in "Caged Bird", Momma hides him in a bin of potatoes and onions to avoid being detected by the Ku Klux Klan. He helps Momma run her store and shows Maya kindness to the point that she wishes that he could be her father. He is just as strict as Momma, however, beating Maya and Bailey after they disrupt a church service and threatening to burn her on a potbelly stove for not learning her multiplication tables.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Uncle Willie
"Shaker, Why Don't You Sing" is Maya Angelou's fourth volume of poetry. She studied and began writing poetry at a young age. After her rape at the age of eight, as recounted in her first autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969), she dealt with her trauma by memorizing and reciting great works of literature, including poetry, which helped bring her out of her self-imposed muteness. The publication of "Shaker, Why Don't You Sing" occurred during one of the most productive periods of Angelou's career. She had written songs for Roberta Flack and had composed movie scores. She had written articles, short stories, TV scripts and documentaries, autobiographies, and poetry, she produced plays, and was named a visiting professor of several colleges and universities.
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? | Background
When Maya and Bailey are sent to live with her mother when they are eight and nine, they stay with her family in St. Louis. Grandmother Baxter, Vivian's mother, is a neighborhood precinct leader of German/black descent who has connections with the local police. Tutti, Tom, and Ira are Vivian's brothers; they allegedly murder Mr. Freeman after he rapes Maya.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Baxter Family
Maya and Bailey's "glamorous if feckless mother". Maya is in awe of her beauty:she is "too beautiful to have children". Vivian captivates both her children with her worldliness and euphoria, especially Bailey. Maya is emotionally separated from her mother. Angelou stated later in her life that she recognized that her mother had abandoned her and her brother, which meant that Vivian was "a terrible parent of young children". Vivian is concerned about providing for her children, but negligent towards them. When Maya becomes pregnant at the end of the book, Vivian accepts Maya and her child; it is the birth of her grandson that causes a connection between mother and daughter.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Vivian Baxter Johnson ("Mother Dear")
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 marginalized to the point that they were unable to present themselves as central characters. Writer Julian Mayfield, who called "Caged Bird" "a work of art that eludes description", has insisted that Angelou's autobiographies set a precedent for African-American autobiography as a whole. Als insisted that "Caged Bird" marked one of the first times that a Black autobiographer could, as Als put it, "write about blackness from the inside, without apology or defense".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Influence
Angelou introduces a unique point of view in American autobiography by revealing her life story through a narrator who is a Black female from the South, at some points a child, and other points a mother. Writer Hilton Als 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, Angelou was worried about her readers' reactions to her disclosure in her second autobiography, "Gather Together in My Name", that she was a prostitute. She went through with it, anyway, after her husband Paul Du Feu advised her to be honest about it.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Style and genre
The guests began telling stories of their childhoods and Angelou's stories impressed Judy Feiffer. The next day she called Robert Loomis at Random House, who became Angelou's editor throughout her long writing career until he retired in 2011, 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", and 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".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Background
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 (presumably by one of Maya's uncles) 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.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Rape
"Caged Bird" has been criticized by many parents, causing it to be removed from school curricula and library shelves. The book was approved to be taught in public schools and was placed in public school libraries through the U.S. in the early-1980s, and was included in advanced placement and gifted student curricula, but attempts by parents to censor it began in 1983. It has been challenged in fifteen U.S. states. Educators have responded to these challenges by removing it from reading lists and libraries, by providing students with alternatives, and by requiring parental permission from students. Some have been critical of its sexually explicit scenes, use of language, and irreverent religious depictions.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Censorship
Angelou uses her autobiography to explore subjects such as identity, rape, racism, and literacy. 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. 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".
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Introduction
Song Books (Solos for Voice 3–92) is a collection of short works by John Cage, composed and compiled by the composer in 1970. It contains pieces of four kinds: songs, songs with electronics, directions for a theatrical performance, and directions for a theatrical performance with electronics. "Any of these may be performed by one or more singers."
Song Books (Cage) | Introduction
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 in a 1993 interview to "do as West Africans do ...
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Literacy
In 1923, the male gospel group Manhattan Harmony Four recorded the song as "Lift Every Voice and Sing (National Negro Anthem)". It was added to the National Recording Registry in 2016. The 1939 film "Keep Punching" features the song. In Maya Angelou's 1969 autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", the song is sung by the audience and students at Maya's eighth-grade graduation, after a white school official dashes the educational aspirations of her class.
Lift Every Voice and Sing | Notable references and performances
The main character, "an unlikely heroine", from whose perspective the story is told. She has been described as "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America". The book covers most of her childhood, from the age of three, when she and her older brother Bailey are sent to their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, until she was sixteen, when she gives birth to her son Clyde. Through the character of Maya, Angelou uses her own childhood to demonstrate how she was able to survive as a black child in a white-dominated world. Maya is resilient, highly intelligent and loves literature.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Marguerite Johnson ("Maya")
The "aristocrat of Stamps" and the town's "black intellectual", Mrs. Flowers is a "self-supporting, independent, graceful" Black woman. She is the first person to treat Maya as an individual, and teaches her about the relationship between Blacks and the larger society, as well as "the beauty and power of language". She gently nurses Maya out of her mutism by reading to her and by loaning her books that inspire Maya to speak again.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Mrs. Bertha Flowers
Lisa is named "Student of the Millennium", so Marge stresses that Homer has to attend her ceremony due to past absences at most of the kids' events. Homer then wakes up early and takes Maggie to the school auditorium. Meanwhile, Marge gets impatient waiting in line at the bank, so she strikes up a conversation with an apparently charming man named Dwight (Steve Buscemi). While talking, Dwight tells Marge to hold on. He then pulls out a gun and tells everyone to get down on the floor, just as another man walks into the bank and pulls out a rifle.
I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot
In his introduction to "Five Birds In a Cage" (1915) in the Fourth series of "One Act Plays of Today", the editor J. W. Marriott wrote:
Gertrude E. Jennings | Career
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 and humor.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Literacy
A white dentist refuses to treat Maya's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him that she had loaned him money during the Depression. The Black community of Stamps enjoys a moment of racial victory when they listen to the radio broadcast of Joe Louis'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. Eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Plot summary
There are a number of minor characters in "Caged Bird", members of the Black and white community in Stamps that fill out Maya's world and inform her influences and early experiences. Among the most notable are:
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Minor characters
"Caged Bird" has been categorized as an autobiography, but Angelou utilizes fiction-writing techniques such as dialogue, thematic development, and characterization. She uses the first-person narrative voice 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 and wit.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Introduction
In 1993, Angelou recited her poem "On the Pulse of Morning" (1993) at the first inauguration of Bill Clinton, making her the first poet to make an inaugural recitation since Robert Frost at the inauguration of John F. Kennedy in 1961. With the publication of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", Angelou publicly discussed aspects of her personal life. She was respected as a spokesperson for black people and women, and her works have been considered a defense of black culture. Her works are widely used in schools and universities worldwide, although attempts have been made to ban her books from some U.S.
Maya Angelou | Introduction
Edmund Fuller insisted that Angelou's intellectual range and artistry were apparent in how she told her story. "Caged Bird" catapulted Angelou to international fame and critical acclaim, was a significant development in Black women's literature in that it "heralded the success of other now prominent 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 and dazzling images. By the mid-1980s, "Caged Bird" had gone through 20 hardback printings and 32 paperback printings.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Critical reception and sales
In 1981, Henahan predicted that only Cage's four books of essays, including "M" and that year's "For The Birds", would be remembered in 2001.
M (John Cage book) | Introduction
The poem tells about the wonders of the South, like Cypresses and Mount Etna, but it also tells about homesickness and patriotism. The cage mentioned in the first verse refers to a cruel way of catching birds: The bird is trapped into a cage with its eyes pierced, and as a night singer it will attract other birds, who will fly straight to the catcher's net. Topelius opposed this harsh way of netting.
Sylvian Joululaulu | Introduction
"Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie" is Maya Angelou's first volume of poetry. She studied and began writing poetry at a young age. After her rape at the age of eight, as recounted in her first autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", she dealt with her trauma by memorizing and reciting great works of literature, including poetry, which helped bring her out of her self-imposed muteness. Angelou recorded two albums of poetry and songs she wrote during her career as a night club performer; the first in 1957 for Liberty Records and the second "The Poetry of Maya Angelou", for GWP Records the year before the publication of her first autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969).
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie | Background
Maya and Bailey's "no-account daddy". He is tall and handsome, with a "smile as slick as brilliantine". He attempts to portray importance, but speaks in a halting manner. He is insensitive towards his children. As Lupton states, "He represents the absent father, the man who is not there for his children, literally and figuratively". Bailey Sr. "has respect for neither morals nor money", but Maya is fascinated by his "ironic pretentiousness". He appears twice in "Caged Bird", when he shows up in Stamps to drive his children to St. Louis, and when Maya visits him for a summer in San Diego.
List of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings characters | Bailey Johnson Sr
Dwight's partner in the robbery is based on John Cazale and his character in the movie "Dog Day Afternoon" which also involved a hostage situation. When Marge visited Dwight in prison Homer was among three Aryan Brotherhood members and called them the three amigos. The song "Who Can It Be Now?" by the Australian group Men at Work plays when Dwight stalks Marge.
I Don't Wanna Know Why the Caged Bird Sings | Cultural references
Devastated and adrift, she joined her brother in Hawaii, where she resumed her singing career. She moved back to Los Angeles to focus on her writing career. Working as a market researcher in Watts, Angelou witnessed the riots in the summer of 1965. She acted in and wrote plays, and returned to New York in 1967. She met her lifelong friend Rosa Guy and renewed her friendship with James Baldwin, whom she had met in Paris in the 1950s and called "my brother", during this time. Her friend Jerry Purcell provided Angelou with a stipend to support her writing. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr.
Maya Angelou | Africa to "Caged Bird": 1961–69
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie (1971) is the first collection of poems by African-American writer and poet Maya Angelou. Many of the poems in "Diiie" were originally song lyrics, written during Angelou's career as a night club performer, and recorded on two albums before the publication of Angelou's first autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969). Angelou considers herself a poet and a playwright, but is best known for her seven autobiographies. Early in her writing career she began a practice of alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry.
Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie | Introduction
Many of the songs she wrote during that period later found their way to her later poetry collections. She eventually gave up performing for a writing career. Despite considering herself a poet and playwright, she wrote "Caged Bird" in 1969, which brought her international recognition and acclaim. Many of her readers consider her a poet first and an autobiographer second, but she is better known for her prose works. She has published several volumes of poetry, and has experienced similar success as a poet. Early in her writing career, she began alternating a volume of poetry with an autobiography. In 1993, she recited one of her best-known poems, "On the Pulse of Morning", at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton.
Poetry of Maya Angelou | Introduction
According to Von Tilzer, he was approached in 1899 by Lamb with the lyrics for a song. Although Von Tilzer liked it, he asked Lamb to change some of the words to make it clear that the woman in the song was married and not a mistress. Later that evening, as he worked out a melody at a piano in a public house with some friends, he noticed that many of the girls nearby were crying, which convinced him the song could be a hit. Later, Von Tilzer would claim that this song was "the key that opened the door of wealth and fame" for him.
A Bird in a Gilded Cage | Background
Empty Words: Writings '73–'78 is a book by American avant-garde composer John Cage (1912–1992), first published in 1979 by Wesleyan University Press.
Empty Words | Introduction
"The Show" was also featured in the films "Moneyball" and "Angus, Thongs and Perfect Snogging".
Jason Reeves (songwriter) | "The Lovesick" and "Caged Birds Set Free"
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? is author and poet Maya Angelou's fourth volume of poetry, published by Random House in 1983. It was published during one of the most productive periods in Angelou's career; she had written four autobiographies and published three other volumes of poetry up to that point. Angelou considered herself a poet and a playwright, but was best known for her seven autobiographies, especially her first," I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", although her poetry has also been successful. She began, early in her writing career, alternating the publication of an autobiography and a volume of poetry.
Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? | Introduction
The book is named ironically. Throughout he refers metaphorically to his caged pet bird. The bird has never sung one note in the cage its confined to, but on him releasing it, the bird returns to him and sings joyously. His friend, Little-Little, asks him the question - “Wouldn't you rather be free, just for a day, than spend a lifetime in a cage? It's beautifully illustrated by the artist Helen Cann, and it was this book that formed the source material for the Horse and Bamboo production. There are black-and-white autobiographical photos of the author in the Afterword.
Guo Yue (musician) | Writing
"The Blinded Bird" is a 1916 poem written by English author and poet Thomas Hardy. The poem was reportedly written as a protest against Vinkensport, a sort of singing competition between male finches. The poem decries the prior historical practice of blinding birds to improve their performance at the sport. For its last stanza Hardy borrows from the New Testament using themes found in 1 Cor. 13: 1-8.
The Blinded Bird | Introduction
Maya Angelou studied and began writing poetry at a young age, having "fallen in love with poetry in Stamps, Arkansas", where she grew up and the setting of her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" (1969). At the age of eight, she was raped, as recounted in "Caged Bird." She dealt with her trauma by memorizing and reciting great works of literature, including poetry, which helped bring her out of her self-imposed muteness. According to scholar Yasmin Y. DeGout, literature also affects Angelou's sensibilities as the poet and writer she becomes, especially the "liberating discourse that would evolve in her own poetic canon".
Poetry of Maya Angelou | Background
When "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African-American women who were able to publicly discuss their personal lives. According to scholar Hilton Als, up to that point, black female writers were marginalized to the point that they were unable to present themselves as central characters in the literature they wrote. Linguist John McWhorter agreed, seeing Angelou's works, which he called "tracts", as "apologetic writing". He placed Angelou in the tradition of African-American literature as a defense of black culture, which he called "a literary manifestation of the imperative that reigned in the black scholarship of the period".
Maya Angelou | Influence