I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou, the first in a seven-volume series and a coming-of-age story illustrating how strength of character and a love of literature helped her 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 sixteen, tracing her transformation from a victim of racism with an inferiority complex into a self-possessed, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudice. 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, and reviewers often categorize the book as autobiographical fiction even though the prevailing critical view characterizes it as an autobiography. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
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Where does the title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings come from?
It comes from Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem Sympathy, and Abbey Lincoln suggested it to Angelou.
Maya Angelou turned to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African American poet whose works she had admired for years, and the title comes from the third stanza of his poem Sympathy. The jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln suggested it. Angelou credited Dunbar, along with Shakespeare, with forming her writing ambition. The critic Mary Jane Lupton reads the caged bird as a symbol of a chained slave, and says the word sings suggests the survival of African Americans through the spiritual.
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Source I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Wikipedia)
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Source I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Wikipedia)
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1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (Wikipedia)
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou.
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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou.
Original language statement
It has been used in educational settings from high schools to universities, and the book has been celebrated for creating new literary avenues for the American memoir.
Lead paragraph
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and 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 helped her to overcome racism and trauma.
Authored By: Maya Angelou, Lead section, authorship
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou.
In Genre: Nonfiction Prose, Lead section, genre
is a 1969 autobiography describing the young and early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou
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