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 t
Cover from the first edition
The book's title comes from a poem by African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. The caged bird, a symbol for the chained slave, is an image Angelou uses throughout all her writings.
Frederick Douglass, 1840s. Angelou's autobiographies are within the tradition of the slave narrative, such as Douglass' Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave (1845).
In addition to being classified as an autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has also been called a Bildungsroman, like George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss.
Maya Angelou
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Maya Angelou was an American memoirist, essayist, poet, and civil rights activist. She published seven autobiographies, three books of essays, several books of poetry, and is credited with a list of p
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
…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…
Angelou in 1993
Publicity photo for Calypso Heat Wave, 1957
Portrait from the first edition of And Still I Rise (1978)
Angelou speaking at a rally for Barack Obama, 2008