Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas is the third book of Maya Angelou's seven-volume autobiography series. Set between 1949 and 1955, the book spans Angelou's early twenties. In this
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas front cover, 1976 first edition
Portrait of Angelou from the first edition of Singin' and Swingin
Singin' and Swingin begins on Fillmore Street (shown here in 2007) in San Francisco.
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
Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas
…well, from Clyde to Guy, and their relationship is strengthened as the book ends. Angelou followed her first two installations of her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969) and Gather Together in My Name (1974), with Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry like Christmas, published in 1976. It marked the first time…
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.