I Know Why Singing Birds is an autobiography of 1969 about the early years of American writer and poet Maya Angelou. The first in the seven-volume series, this is an age story that illustrates how the strength of character and love of literature can help overcome racism and trauma. The book begins when a three-year-old Maya and her brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother and end up when Maya becomes a mother at the age of 16. In the journey of Caged Bird Maya transforms from a racism victim with an inferiority complex to a self-contained, dignified young woman capable of responding to prejudices.
Angelou was challenged by his friend, author James Baldwin, and his editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that was also a lecturer. 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 her as an autobiography, a genre she's trying to critique, change, and expand. This book covers general topics for autobiography written by American black women in the years after the Civil Rights Movement: Black mother celebrations; a criticism of racism; family importance; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition.
Angelou uses his autobiography to explore subjects such as identity, rape, racism, and literacy. He also wrote in new ways about the lives of women in male-dominated societies. Maya, a younger version of Angelou and the book's central character, has been called "a symbolic character for every black girl growing in America". Angelou's description of rape as an eight-year-old boy mastered this book, though it is presented briefly in the text. Another metaphor, that a bird struggling to flee from its cage, is a central image throughout the work, comprising "a series of lessons on fighting racist oppression". The treatment of Angelou's racism provides thematic unity in this book. Literacy and the power of words help young Maya overcome a confusing world; the book becomes a protection when he works through trauma.
Bird Cage was nominated for the National Book Award in 1970 and remained on the New York Times bestsellers list for two years. It has been used in educational settings from high school to university, and this book has been celebrated to create a new literary path to memoir America. However, graphic depiction of books about child rape, racism, and sexuality has led to it being challenged or banned in some schools and libraries.
Video I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
​​â € <â €
Before writing I Know Why Cage Singing at the age of forty, Angelou has a long and diverse career, holding jobs such as composers, singers, actors, civil rights workers, journalists, and educators. In the late 1950s, he joined the Harlem Writers Guild, where he met a number of important African-American writers, including his friend and his mentor James Baldwin. After hearing the civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. speaking for the first time in 1960, he was inspired to join the Civil Rights Movement. He arranged some benefits for him, and he named the Northern Coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. He worked for several years in Ghana, West Africa, as a journalist, actress, and educator. He was invited back to the United States by Malcolm X to work for him shortly before his assassination in 1965. In 1968, the King asked him to organize the parade, but he was also killed on April 4, which was also his birthday. For years, Angelou responded to the killing of the King by not celebrating his birthday, instead choosing to meet, call, or send flowers to his widow Coretta Scott King.
Angelou was very depressed in the months after King's killing, so to help lift his spirits, Baldwin took him to a dinner party at cartoonist Jules Feiffer's house and his wife Judy in late 1968. The guests began telling their childhood stories and Angelou's story impressed Judy Feiffer. The next day he telephoned Robert Loomis at Random House, who became editor of Angelou throughout his long writing career until he retired in 2011, and "told him he should make this woman write the book". At first, Angelou refuses, because he considers himself a poet and a playwright. According to Angelou, Baldwin has a "secret hand" to make him write a book, and advises Loomis to use "a little reverse psychology", and reports that Loomis tricked him by challenging him: "As good as it is," he said, "because writing autobiography for literature is almost impossible". Angelou could not resist the challenge, and he started writing Caged Bird. After "cleaning up" in London, it took two years to write it. She shared the script with her friend, author Jessica Mitford, before submitting it for publication.
Angelou then writes six additional autobiographies, which cover a range of adult young experiences. They differ in style and narration, but unite in their theme and stretch from Arkansas to Africa, and return to the US, from the beginning of World War II until the killing of the King. Like Caged Bird , the events in these books are episodic and made as a series of short stories, but do not follow a strict chronology. Then the books in the series include Gathering in My Name (1974), Singin 'and Swingin' and Gettin 'Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God's Children Needing Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Until Heaven (2002) , and Mom & amp; I & amp; Mom (2013, at age 85). Critics often judge Angelou's autobiography "in the first light", and Caged Bird generally receive the highest praise.
Starting with Caged Bird , Angelou used the same "ritual of writing" for years. He will wake up at 5 am and check in in the hotel room, where staff are asked to move photos from the wall. He writes in a yellow notebook while lying in bed, with a bottle of sherry, a deck of cards to play solitaire, Roget's Thesaurus, and the Bible, and left in the afternoon. He calculates an average of 10-12 pages of material each day, which he edits into three or four pages at night. Lupton states that this ritual shows "endurance of purpose and inflexible use of time". Angelou went through this process to give himself time to turn events into his life into art, and to "mesmerize" himself; as he said in a 1989 interview with the British Broadcasting Corporation, to "revive suffering, suffering, Sturm und Drang ". He puts himself back on the moment he writes about, even during traumatic experiences such as his rape in Caged Bird, to "tell the truth of man" about his life. Opal Moore's critics say about Caged Bird : "... Though easy to read, it is not 'easy to read'". Angelou declares that he is playing cards to reach the charm, to access his memory more effectively. He has stated, "It may take an hour to get into it, but once I'm in it - ha! It's so delicious!" He did not find the process cathartic; instead, he finds relief in "telling the truth".
Title
When choosing the title, Angelou turned to Paul Laurence Dunbar, an African-American poet whose work was admired for many years. Jazz vocalist and civil rights activist Abbey Lincoln suggested the title. According to Lyman B. Hagen, the title appeals to Angelou's readers into the book while reminding them that it is possible to lose control over one's life and to get one's freedom taken from them. Angelou has praised Dunbar, along with Shakespeare, by forming his "writing ambitions". The title of this book comes from the third verse of Dunbar's poem, "Sympathy":
I know why the caged bird is singing, ah me, yeah When his wings bruised and his chest hurt,
When he overcame his wand and will be free;
This is not a song of joy or excitement,
But a prayer that he sends from the heart of his heart deep,
But a petition, which ascends to the Heaven that he missed -
I know why the caged bird sings.
Maps I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Plot summary
I Know Why The Bird Cage Says follows the life of Marguerite (called "My" or "Maya" by her sister) from the age of three to seventeen and the struggle she faces - especially with racism - in the South of the United States. Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older sister Bailey were sent to live with the paternal grandmother (Momma) and the crippled uncle (Uncle Willie) in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya and Bailey are haunted by their parents' neglect throughout the book - they travel alone and are labeled like luggage.
Many of the problems facing Maya in her childhood came from the blatant racism of her white neighbors. Although Mamma is relatively wealthy because she owns a general store in the heart of the Black Stamps community, the white kids in their town make the Mayan family unrelenting. One of these "powhitetrash" girls, for example, revealed his pubic hair to Momma in an embarrassing incident. At the beginning of the book, Momma hid Uncle Willie on a vegetable tray to protect her from the Ku Klux Klan robber. Maya must bear the humiliation on her behalf that was transformed into Mary by a racist employer. A white speaker at his eighth graduation ceremony lowered Black's audience by showing that they have limited employment opportunities. A white dentist refused to take care of Maya's rotting teeth, even when Momma reminded her that she had lent him money during the Depression. The Black Stamps community enjoys a moment of racial triumph as they listen to radio broadcasts of Joe Louis's championship fight, but generally, they feel a heavy burden of racist oppression.
The turning point in this book occurs when Maya and Bailey's fathers suddenly appear in the Stamps. He took the two boys with him when he left, but left them with their mother at St. Louis, Missouri. An eight-year-old Maya is sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend. Freeman. He was found guilty during the trial, but escaped from prison and murdered, possibly by Maya's uncle. Maya feels guilty and withdraws from everyone except her sister. Even after returning to the Stamps, Maya remains closed and barely audible until she meets Mrs Bertha Flowers, the "aristocrat of the Black Stamps", who pushes her through books and communications to regain her voice and soul. This coaxed Maya out of her shell.
Later, Momma decided to send her grandchildren to their mother in San Francisco, California, to protect them from the dangers of racism in the Stamps. Maya attended George Washington High School and studied dance and drama about scholarships at the California Labor School. Before graduating, he became the first female black tram conductor in San Francisco. While still in high school, Maya visited her father in southern California on a summer and had some important experience for her development. He drove the car for the first time when he had to haul his father's drunken home from a jaunt to Mexico. He experienced homelessness for a short time after a fight with his father's girlfriend.
During the final year of Maya high school, she worries that she may be a lesbian (whom she confused because of her sexual experiences with the belief that lesbians are also hermaphrodites). She finally started sexual intercourse with a teenage boy. She became pregnant, which on the advice of her sister, she hid from her family until her pregnancy eight months to graduate from high school. Maya gave birth at the end of the book.
Style and genre
Angelou's prose works, while presenting a unique interpretation of the form of autobiography, can be placed in a long tradition of African-American autobiography. He uses fictional writing techniques such as dialogue, characterization, and thematic development, but often leads reviewers to categorize his books, including I Know Why Singing Birds , as autobiographical fiction. Other critics, such as Lupton, insist that Angelou's books should be categorized as autobiographical because they fit the standard structure of the genre: they are written by a single author, they are chronological, and they contain elements of characters, techniques, and themes. In a 1983 interview with African-American critic Claudia Tate, Angelou called his autobiographical books.
Scholar Joanne M. Braxton sees Caged Bird as "a fully developed full-blown autobiographical form of black women that began to emerge in the 1940s and 1950s." This book presents common themes in autobiography by American black women: a celebration of the Black mother; a criticism of racism; family importance; and the quest for independence, personal dignity, and self-definition. Angelou introduces a unique point of view in American autobiography by telling the story of his life through a narrator who is a black woman from the South, at some point of the child, and the other appointing a mother. The author of Hilton Als calls Angelou as one of the "self exposed pioneers", willing to focus honestly on the more negative aspects of his personality and choice. For example, Angelou worries about her reader's reaction to her disclosure in her second autobiography, Gathering in My Name , that she is a prostitute. However, he did so, after her husband, Paul Du Feu advised her to be honest about it.
Angelou has admitted that there is a fictional aspect to his books, and that he tends to "deviate from the conventional concept of autobiography as the truth". Angelou discussed his writing process with Plimpton, and when asked if he changed the truth to correct his story, he admitted he had. He stated, "Sometimes I make a diameter of a mix of three or four people, because the essence of just one person is not strong enough to be written." Although Angelou never admits to changing facts in his story, he has used these facts to make an impact with the reader. As Hagen states, "One can assume that the 'essence of the data' is in the work of Angelou". Hagen also stated that Angelou is "fictional, to increase interest". For example, Angelou uses the first person's narrative habit with an autobiography, which is told from the point of view of a child who is "remade artistically by the adult narrator."
Angelou uses two different voices, adult writers and children who are the focus of the book, called Angelou as "Maya characters". Angelou reports that maintaining the distinction between her and Mayan characters is "very difficult", but "indispensable". Scholar Liliane Arensberg stated that Angelou "avenged the helpless pains tied up by the child's tongue" using the self-irony and adult intelligence. Thus, Caged Bird has been called Bildungsroman or the coming-of-age story; critic Mary Jane Lupton compares it to another Bildungsromans like George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss novel. According to Lupton, the two books share the following similarities: focusing on strong-willed heroes who have solid relationships with their brothers, examining the role of literature in life, and emphasizing the importance of family and community life.
Form
When Angelou wrote I Know Why Singing Birds in the late 1960s, one of the necessary features and accepted literature, according to Pierre A. Walker's critics, was thematic unity. One of Angelou's goals is to create a book that meets this criterion, to achieve its political goals, which show how to fight racism in America. The text structure, which resembles a series of short stories, is not chronological but thematic. Walker, in his 1993 article on Caged Bird, "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Shapes", focuses on the structure of his book, and explains how he supports the presentation of racism. According to Walker, critics have neglected to analyze his structure, choosing to focus on his themes, which he feels to ignore the political nature of the book. He stated, "One serves Angelou and Caged Bird better by emphasizing how political forms and content work together." Angelou compiled his book so as to present a series of lessons on how to resist racism and oppression. Maya's development goes through thematically unifying the book, something "very contrasting with the episodic narrative quality". The way in which Angelou builds, organizes, and organizes sketches often undermines her childhood chronology by "pairing the events of a chapter with the events that preceded it and the next so that they also commented on each other".
For example, an incident with "powhitetrash" girls occurred in chapter 5, when Maya was ten years old, long before Angelou told her rape in chapter 12, which occurred when Maya was 8. Walker explains that Angelou's goal in placing the sketch in this way is that it follows the thematic structure. Angelou's editor, Robert Loomis, agrees, stating that Angelou can rewrite one of his books by changing the sequence of facts to make a different impact on the reader. Hagen sees Angelou's structure somewhat differently, focusing on Maya's journey "to build a valuable self-concept", and declares that he compiled the book into three parts: arrivals, transit, and departure, which occur geographically and psychologically. However, Hagen notes that instead of starting Crime Caged Bird, with the arrival of Maya and Bailey at Stamps, Angelou began the book much later in chronological fashion by telling of embarrassing experiences in the church, an incident that showed less sense Maya from self, insecurity, and lack of status. Hagen explains that Angelou's goal is to show Maya's journey from insecurity until his precious feelings are gained by being a mother at the end of the book.
Themes
Identity
In the journey of Caged Bird Maya, who has been described as "the symbolic character for every black girl growing in America", has evolved from being a victim of racism with a low self-esteem of being. conscious individuals who respond to racism with the dignity and strong sense of their own identity. Feminist expert Maria Lauret states that "the formation of women's cultural identity" is woven into the book narrative, establishing Maya as a "role model for black women". Scholar Liliane Arensberg calls this presentation the "identity theme" of Angelou and the main motive in Angelou's narration. The unstable Maya life within Caged Bird shows her feelings "as being constantly in the process of becoming, dying and being reborn, in all its ramifications." African-American literature scholar Dolly McPherson agrees that Angelou creatively uses Christian mythology and theology to present biblical themes of death, regeneration, and rebirth.
As Lauret points out, Angelou and other female writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s used an autobiography to reorganize the ways of writing about the lives and identity of women in male-dominated societies. Until now, black women are not portrayed realistically in African-American fiction and autobiography, which means that Angelou was one of the first Black autobiographers to be present, as Cudjoe said, "the strong and authentic marking of the [African American] womanhood his efforts to understand and to love, not for bitterness and despair ". Lauret sees a connection between Angelou's autobiography, which Lauret calls "subjectivist fiction" and "feminist first-person narrative," and fictitious first-person narratives (such as Marilyn French's
As a refugee girl, Maya's pain is exacerbated by awareness of her displacement. He is a "forgotten child," and must agree with "unimaginable reality" for being unloved and undesirable; he lives in an unfriendly world that defines beauty in white terms and who rejects him just because he is a black girl. Maya internalized the rejection she experienced - her belief in her own evil was "absolute". McPherson believes that the concept of the family, or what he calls "kinship kinship", in Angelou's books must be understood in light of the early childhood movements of
Angelou used many of his roles, incarnations, and identities throughout his books to illustrate how oppression and personal history are intertwined. For example, in Caged Bird Angelou shows "racist habits" for naming African-Americans, as shown when his white master insists on calling her "Mary". Angelou describes the company's name change as "the horror of hell for being 'called out of [someone's] name'". Scholar Debra Walker King called it a racist insult and attack on Maya's race and self-image. Re-naming stresses Maya's inability and degrades her identity, individuality, and uniqueness. Maya understands that she is being insulted and rebelled by breaking Mrs. Cullinan's favorite dish, but feels justified when, as she leaves her employer's home, Ny. Cullinan finally got his name right. Another incident in a book that solidifies Mayan identity is his journey to Mexico with his father, when he has to drive a car for the first time. Contrary to her experience in the Stamps, Maya finally "controls her fate". This experience is very important for Maya's growth, such as the incident that soon followed her, her childless home after arguing with her father's boyfriend. Both of these incidents gave Maya knowledge of self-determination and confirm her pride.
Scholar Mary Burgher believes that Black autobiographers like Angelou have dismantled the stereotypes of African-American mothers as "breeders and matriarch [s]", and have presented them as having a "satisfying creative and personal role". Lupton believes that the plot construction and character development of Angelou is influenced by the same maternal/child motif as found in the work of the Harlem Renaissance poet Jessie Fauset. During the first five years of her life, Maya considers herself an orphan and finds comfort in the thought that her mother has died. Maya's feelings for and relationships with her own mother, whom she blames for her neglect, express themselves in ambivalence and "aggression of oppressed violence." For example, Maya and her brother destroyed the first Christmas gift sent by their mother. This strong feeling was not resolved until the end of the book, when Maya became her own mother, and her mother eventually became the presence of the care that Maya had missed. The two main influences of mothers on Mayan life also changed; Vivian became a more active participant, while Momma became less effective as Maya, by becoming a mother herself, moving from childhood to adulthood.
Racism
Stamps, Arkansas, as depicted in Caged Bird , has a bit of "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 witnessed evil in his society, directed at black women, shaping Angelou's young life and informing his views into adulthood. Angelou uses the metaphor of a bird that struggles to escape from its enclosure, described in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, as a prominent symbol throughout its autobiographical sequence. Like the elements in the prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou's cages resulting from racism and oppression. The caged bird's metaphor also calls "the contradiction of birds singing in the midst of their struggle". Scholar Ernece B. Kelley calls Caged Bird "a gentle indictment of white American women"; Hagen extends it further, stating that the book is "a story that worries white domination".
Bird Cage has been called "perhaps the most satisfying aesthetic autobiography written in the years immediately after the Civil Rights era". Critics Pierre A. Walker expressed similar sentiments, and placed him in African-American political literary tradition. Angelou pointed out, through his involvement with the Black of Stamps community, as well as his presentation of a realistic and clear racist character and the "vulgarity of a white Southern attitude toward African Americans", his growing understanding of the rules for survival in racist society. Angelou's autobiography, beginning with Caged Bird , contains a sequence of lessons on countering oppression. The sequence he describes directs Angelou, as the protagonist, from "helpless anger and anger to subtle forms of resistance, and ultimately into direct and active protest."
Walker asserts that Angelou's treatment of racism is what gives the autobiography of their thematic unity and underlines one of their main themes: racism's injustice and how to fight it. For example, in Angelou's portrayal of the "powhitetrash" incident, Maya reacts with anger, anger, humiliation, and helplessness, but Momma teaches them how they can maintain their personal dignity and pride when confronted with racism, and that it is an effective basis for activism protesting and fighting racism. Walker called Momma a "soft-spoken strategy" and McPherson called it a "weighty program of persistence".
Angelou describes Momma as a realist whose patience, courage, and silence ensure the survival and success of those who come after it. For example, Maya responds firmly when confronted with the demeaning treatment by Ny. Cullinan, his white master, and, later in the book, broke race barriers to become the first black tram operator in San Francisco. In addition, Angelou's description of a strong and cohesive black stamp community shows how African Americans subvert a repressive institution to contain racism. Arensberg insisted that Angelou shows how he, as a Black boy, evolved out of his "racial hatred", which is common in the works of many contemporary Black novelists and autobiographers. At first she wished she could be white, ever since growing a dangerous white American Black; then he throws away his hatred and embraces a strong race identity.
Rape
Angelou's description of rape as an eight-year-old boy mastered autobiography, though it is presented briefly in the text. Mary Vermillion's scholar compared Angelou's treatment of rape against Harriet Jacobs in his autobiography Incident in the Life of a Slave Girl . Jacobs and Angelou both use rape as a metaphor for the suffering of African-Americans; Jacobs used the metaphor to criticize the slaveholding culture, while Angelou used it to first internalize, then challenged, the twentieth-century racist conception of black female bodies (ie, that black women were physically uninteresting). Rape, according to Vermillion, "illustrates the difficulties of black girls in controlling, understanding, and respecting both body and words".
Arensberg notes that the Mayan rape connected with the theme of death in Caged Bird, Freeman threatened to kill Maya's brother, Bailey if he told someone about the rape. After Maya lay during Freeman's trial, stating that the rape was the first time she touched him inappropriately, Freeman was killed (probably by one of Maya's uncles) and Maya saw her words as the bearer of death. As a result, he decided not to talk to anyone other than Bailey. Angelou attributes the violation of his body and the devaluation of his words through the portrayal of the silence he had been imposing for five years. As Angelou later said, "I think if I spoke, my mouth would just release something that would kill people, randomly, so it's better not to speak".
African-American literature scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe calls Angelou's portrayal of rape a "burden" of Caged Bird: a demonstration of "the way in which Black women are violated in their youth and..." unnecessary 'from the South girl in her movement toward the teenager. "Vermillion goes so far as to maintain that a black woman who writes about her rape risks reinforcing negative stereotypes about her race and gender When asked a few decades later how she was able to survive such trauma , Angelou explains it by stating, "I can not recall a time when I was not loved by someone." When asked by the same interviewer why he wrote about the experience, he showed that he wanted to show the complications of rape and wanted to prevent it from happening to others , so anyone who has been raped may gain understanding and not blaming himself for that.
Literacy
As Lupton points out, all of Angelou's autobiography, especially Caged Bird and its soon-to-be Gather Together in My Name, is very concerned with what [Angelou] knows and how he learn it ". Lupton compares Angelou's informal education with the education of other Black authors in the 20th century, who did not get an official title and depended on "direct instruction from African American cultural forms". Angelou's quest for learning and literacy is parallel "the central myth of black culture in America": that freedom and literacy are connected. Angelou was influenced by the writers who were introduced to him by Mrs. Flowers during his mutations, including Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. Angelou stated, early in Caged Bird, that he, as a Mayan character, "met and fell in love with William Shakespeare". Critic Mary Vermillion sees the connection between the Mayan and Shakespeare rape "The Rape of Lucrece", which Maya remembered and recited when she regained her speech. Vermillion states that Maya found solace in the identification of poetry with suffering. Maya finds their novels and characters complete and meaningful, so she uses them to understand the bewildering world. He is deeply involved in the fantasy world of his books so he even uses it as a way to deal with his rape, writes in Caged Bird, "... I'm sure that briefly my mother or Bailey or Green Hornet will be crushed at the door and save me ".
According to Walker, the power of words is another theme that appears repeatedly in Caged Bird . For example, Maya chose not to speak after her rape because she was afraid of the power of destructive words. Mrs Flowers, by introducing her to classical literature and poetry, taught her about the positive power of language and empowered Maya to speak again. The importance of spoken and written words also appears repeatedly in Caged Bird and in all of Angelou's autobiography. Referring to the importance of effective literacy and writing methods, Angelou had counseled Oprah Winfrey in a 1993 interview to "do what the West Africans do... listen to in-depth talk," or "utterances beneath the obvious". McPherson said, "If there is one stable element in Angelou's youth, it is [a] dependence on the books". The public library is a "quiet refuge" where Maya retreats when she is in crisis. Hagen describes Angelou as a "natural narrator," which "reflects a good listener with a rich oral heritage". Hagen also insisted that the years of ugliness Angelou gave him this skill.
Angelou is also strongly influenced by slave, spiritual, poetry, and other autobiographical narratives. Angelou read the Bible twice as a child, and memorized many parts of it. African-American spirituality, as represented by Angelou's grandmother, has influenced all of Angelou's writings, in the church community activities she first experienced in Stamps, in sermons, and in the scriptures. Hagen goes on to say that besides being influenced by the rich literary form, Angelou has also been influenced by oral traditions. In Caged Bird , Ny. Flowers encouraged 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.
Angelou's humor in Caged Bird and in all his autobiography is derived from the Black folklore and is used to show that regardless of racism and severe oppression, blacks flourished and, as Hagen said, "a community of songs and laughter and courage ". Hagen stated that Angelou was able to make the indictment of institutionalizing racism as he laughed at his shortcomings and lack of community and "balancing stories of black resistance against white myth and misperceptions". Hagen also characterizes Caged Bird as the "blues genre of autobiography" because it uses elements of blues music. These elements include the act of witnessing when talking about one's life and struggle, ironic humiliation, and the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations. Hagen also saw an African American element preaching in Caged Bird. The use of the African-American oral tradition by Angelou creates a sense of community in his readers, and identifies those who belong to him.
Reception and inheritance
Important receipts and sales
I Know Why Singing Birds is the most famous of Angelou's autobiography. The other volumes in her seven autobiographical sequences were judged and compared to Caged Bird. It became a bestseller soon after it was published. Angelou's friend and mentor, James Baldwin, stated that his book "frees the reader into life" and calls it "the study of the Bible about life in the midst of death". According to the authors of Angelou's biography, "Readers, especially women, and especially black women, take the book to heart".
By the end of 1969, criticism had placed Angelou in another Black autobiographical tradition. Poet James Bertolino asserted that Caged Bird "is one of the important books produced by our culture". He insisted that "[w] e all have to read it, especially our children". It was nominated for the National Book Award in 1970, never out of print, and has been published in many languages. This is a selection of Book of the Month Club and a selection of Ebony Book Club. In 2011, Time Magazine placed this book in the list of 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923.
Critic Robert A. Gross calls Caged Bird "a tour de force language". Edmund Fuller insists that Angelou's intellectual and artistic reach is very clear in how he tells his story. Caged Bird catapulted Angelou into international fame and critical acclaim, a significant development in black women's literature in terms of "touting the success of other now eminent authors". Other reviewers praised Angelou's use of the book, including critic E. M. Guiney, who reported that Caged Bird is one of the best autobiographies of its kind I have read. Critic R. A. Gross praised Angelou for using her rich and fascinating images.
In the mid-1980s, Caged Bird had past 20 hardback prints and 32 paperback prints. A week after Angelou recited his poem On the Pulse of Morning at the inauguration of President Bill Clinton in 1993, the sale of paperback versions Caged Bird and his other works increased 300-600 percent. Caged Bird has been sold steadily since it was published, but it increased 500 percent. The 16-page publication "On the Pulse of Morning" became a best-seller, and the recording of the poem was awarded a Grammy Award. Bantam Books Caged Bird is a 36-week bestseller, and they have to reprint 400,000 copies of his books to meet demand. Random House, which publishes Angelou's hardcover and poetry books later that year, reported that they sold more of their books in January 1993 than they did in 1992, marking an increase of 1,200 percent.
The book's reception has not been universally positive; for example, the author Francine Prose considers inclusion in the secondary school curriculum as the part responsible for the "dumbing down" of American society. Prose calls this book "manipulative melodrama", and considers Angelou's writing style as a low example of poetic prose in memoirs. He accused Angelou of combining a dozen metaphors in a single paragraph and to "obscure ideas that can be expressed much more simply and precisely". Many parents across the United States are trying to ban the book from schools and libraries because it is inappropriate for high school students, because it promotes premarital sex, homosexuality, cohabitation, and pornography, and does not support traditional values. Parents also object to the use of obscene books and vivid and rough portrayals of rape and racism.
Influence
When Caged Bird was published in 1969, Angelou was hailed as a new kind of memoirist, one of the first African-American women able to openly discuss his private life. Until then, black female writers had been marginalized to the point where they could not present themselves as central figures. Writer Julian Mayfield, who calls Caged Bird a "piece of art that does not belong to the description", has asserted that Angelou's autobiography sets a precedent for African-American autobiography as a whole. Als insisted that Caged Bird marked one of the first times a Black autobiographer could, as Als said, "write about darkness from within, without apology or defense". Through his autobiography writing, Angelou became recognized as a respected spokesman for blacks and women. Caged Bird makes it "without a doubt...... the most visible black female autobiographer". Although Als considered Caution an important contribution to the increase of Black feminist writing in the 1970s, he attributed his success to less in originality than the "resonance on the prevailing Zeitgeist" of his time, at the end of the American Civil Rights Movement. The writings of Angelou, who are more interested in self-revelation than in politics or feminism, freed many other female writers to "open themselves without shame to the eyes of the world".
Angelou's autobiography, especially the first volume, has been used in narrative and multicultural approaches to teacher education. Jocelyn A. Glazier, a professor at George Washington University, has used Caged Bird and Gather Together in My Name while training teachers to precisely explore racism in their classes. The use of Angelou's words of harassment, mockery, humor, and irony led to an autobiographical reader Angelou wondering what was "abandoned" and unsure how to respond to the events described by Angelou. These techniques force white readers to explore their feelings about their race and their privileged status in society. Glazier finds that although critics have focused on where Angelou fits in the genre of African-American autobiography and his literary techniques, the reader reacts to his story with "surprises, especially when [they] enter text with certain expectations about the genre of autobiography".
Educator Daniel Challener, in his 1997 Book of Resilience in Childhood, analyzed events in Caged Bird to illustrate endurance in children. Challener states that Angelou's book provides a useful framework for exploring the obstacles facing many children like Maya and how the community helps these kids succeed like Angelou did. Psychologist Chris Boyatzis has used Caged Bird to complement scientific theories and research in instructional development topics such as self-concept development and self-esteem, ego endurance, industry versus inferiority, harassment effects. , parenting style, sibling and friendship, gender issues, cognitive development, puberty, and identity formation in adolescence. He called the book an extremely effective tool for giving concrete examples of these psychological concepts.
Sensor
Caged Bird is criticized by many parents, causing it to be removed from the school curriculum and library shelves. The book was approved for teaching in public schools and placed in public school libraries through the US in the early 1980s, and was included in the advanced placement and curriculum of gifted students, but the efforts by parents to censor began in 1983. It has been challenged in 15 states US. Educators have responded to these challenges by removing them from the list and reading libraries, by providing students with alternatives, and by requesting parental permission from students. Some people are critical of their explicit sexual scenes, the use of language, and irreverent religious portrayals.
Caged Bird appeared third in the American Library Association's (ALA) list of the 100 Most-Challenged Books of 1990-2000, sixth on the 2000-2009 ALA list, and one of the ten most-banned books from the school library secondary and junior high schools and classrooms.
Movie version
Source of the article : Wikipedia
0 Comments