The Importance of I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Essay Example

The Importance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings The narrative I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography of Maya Angelou. The importance of her story cannot be misjudged. Her account of an African American girl living in the 1930s rural South, written at the aftermath of the chaotic 1960s, moved the collective consciousness of a nation struggling with the issues of women’s liberation and civil rights (Mari 1984). After the appearance of Angelou at the 1993 inauguration of President Bill Clinton, where she recited her verse ‘On the Pulse of Morning,’ the general public’s interest in her literary brilliance has deepened (Conway 1992). Angelou at first made a decision to create the autobiography because very few had been published for young African American girls in America. She aimed to show to her fellow people that in spite of the hindrances and the miseries they suffered, there was an overflowing wit and love to be felt and experienced in the African American society (Elliot 1989). Certainly, the narrative has a quite definite importance for young African American girls. This essay will attempt to provide an account of the importance of Maya Angelou’s highly celebrated autobiography. Oprah Winfrey, in her interview with Angelou in 1993, explained how significant the story was to her because she was able to see her own experience in the narrative (Megna-Wallace 1998). However, in spite of her novel objectives, Angelou discovered that when she started writing the narrative her audience and thoughts transformed (Megna-Wallace 1998): “I saw it was not just for black girls but for young Jewish boys and old Chinese women” (p. xii). The fame of the autobiography survives not merely because it keeps on being instructive on subjects of gender and race, but also due to its complete story of survival. This importance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings deals with the general and specific components of the autobiography of Angelou. It starts with an emphasis on the literary components of the narrative: its main themes, setting, plot, genre, perspective, and others. This literary importance sketches the journey of Angelou from a timid, anxious, and lonely girl to an adolescent who endures countless frustrations and pains and becomes known as a self-sufficient and confident young woman. The importance of the narrative involves particular topics raised by the story and the specific historical event it depicts. An importance such as this presupposes that a literary piece like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a vibrant tale of not only a single individual, but of the African American community. The autobiography is quite a multilayered account that can provide ideas about the culture and history of a community at a given time and place that poses matters of intense and universal importance. This essay will attempt to elaborate the importance of Angelou’s autobiography in terms of historical and cultural context. Selwyn Cudjoe, in his reading of Angelou’s autobiographical pieces, claims that African Americans have used autobiography as their instrument of self-expression (Evans 1984): “The Afro-American autobiographical statement is the most Afro-American of all Afro American literary pursuits” (p. 6). He refers to the autobiographies of popular authors such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker Washington, Malcolm X, Frederick Douglass, and Zora Neale Hurston, as statement to “the strength, consistency, and importance of this genre in Afro-American literature” (Megna-Wallace 1984, 1). The accounts of slaves make up the earliest written autobiographies of African Americans (Smith 1974). Slaves, through writing, aim to reveal the appalling situations under which they lived and to give evidence of their rights as human beings to reinforce the abolitionist campaign (Evans 1984). Sidonie Smith (1974), in her piece Where I’m Bound, talks about the thematic and structural patterns found in the slave accounts, which she claims are reiterated in succeeding African American autobiographies, along with that of Angelou (Megna-Wallace 1998). Smith states: “The ex-slave narrated the story of his successful break into a community that allowed authentic self-expression and fulfillment in a social role… He also narrated the story of his radical break away from an enslaving community that forbade him authentic selfhood” (Smith 2008, ix). Jill Ker Conway, in her collected works Written by Herself, specifies a prevailing issue in African American women’s autobiography that is thoroughly presented in Angelou’s book (Megna-Wallace 1998): “Because, from girlhood, these women faced the dual injustices of racial hostility and male exploitation, their life histories are told with no hint of romantic conventions. They describe, instead, a quest for physical and psychological survival” (p. 2). The account of Angelou of her early days narrates her regular experiences with classism, sexism, and racism simultaneous with her description of the individuals, experiences, and personal attributes that assisted her in surviving the overwhelming forces of her environment (Conway 1992). In spite of the many oppression and discrimination she experienced as a young girl living in the racially excluded community of Stamps, Arkansas, she highlights the family members and role models who supported and took care of her and the occurrences that helped in the development of her strength and independence (Elliot 1989). The defiant character and appetite for a challenge are exposed in an interview where she revealed that she initially rejected the chance to write her own life story, but was incapable of opposing when she was informed that “to write an autobiography as literature is the most difficult thing anyone could do” (Megna-Wallace 1998, 2). Angelou also revealed in the interview that “Some events stood out in my mind more than others. Some, though, were never recorded because they either were so bad or so painful, that there was no way to write about them honestly and artistically without making them melodramatic. They would have taken the book off its course” (Elliot 1989, 152). Hence, the importance of Angelou’s points of view indicates one of the convoluted subjects concerned in the interpretation of autobiography. Although autobiographers probably plan to reveal the truth about their personal experiences, they nonetheless make sound decisions about the things to exclude or include so as to create a clear and coherent written life story. Conway emphasizes, “Autobiographical narratives are fictions, in the same sense that the narrator imposes her or his order on the ebb and flow of experience and gives us a false sense of certainty and finality about causation in life” (Megna-Wallace 1998, 2). In spite of these constraints, Conway continues to declare the helpful benefits of autobiographical stories: “Yet they are not fictions but accounts of real lives, lived in a specific time and place, windows on the past, chances to enter and inhabit the real world of another person, chances to try on another identity and so broaden our own” (Conway 1992, vii). Angelou asserts that her works are autobiographies and not novels, indicating that she had planned to expose the truth about her life (Elliot 1989). However, her revelation also informs audiences of her objective to widen her focus further than her life to involve an account of the historical period she came into contact with (Megna-Wallace 1998): When I wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I wasn’t thinking so much about my own life or identity. I was thinking about a particular time in which I lived and the influences of that time on a number of people… I used the central figure--- myself--- as a focus to show how one person can make it through those times (p. 3). The comments of Angelou are in agreement with the analysis of Cudjoe of the objectives of African American autobiography in most cases (Megna-Wallace 1998): “The autobiography… is meant to serve the group rather than glorify the individual’s exploits. The concerns of the collective predominate and one’s personal experiences are presumed to be the closest approximation of the group’s experiences” (p. 3). In the belief of Angelou, the episodes she opts to discuss in her autobiography underline the ways she dealt with her painful and unhappy life situations, and how others, as well, can survive (Elliot 1989). She maintains: “All my work, my life, everything is about survival. All my work is meant to say, ‘You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated’” (Elliot 1989, 152). Subsequently, Angelou writes from the point of view of a self-reliant and wise adult and polishes her work to communicate the progress of her life, to show how she surmounted her own failures and endured. However, it is necessary to remember Angelou’s assertion that her life story is more than merely a narrative of her personal defeats and successes. Cudjoe, in his reading, claims that Angelou triumphs in being widely representative of African American life in her autobiographical pieces (Megna-Wallace 1998): As a statement, Angelou presents a powerful, authentic, and profound signification of Afro-American life and the changing concerns of the Afro-American woman in her quest for personal autonomy, understanding, and love. Such a statement, because of the simple, forthright, and honest manner in which it is presented, is depicted against the larger struggle of Afro-American and African peoples for their liberation and triumphs. It is a celebration of the struggle, survival, and existence of Afro-American people (p. 9). By means of her perceptive depiction of the social foundations and environments that influenced her life, Angelou realizes her goal of communicating the effect of the historical context on her life and of others. Therefore, Angelou’s I Know Why Caged Bird Sings is important because of two reasons: first, it is a historical chronicle of an African American girl who survived all the oppressions and discriminations at the time; and second, as a wide-ranging tale that reveals the battle of numerous African American women against gender and racial prejudice. References Conway, Jill K. Written by Herself: Autobiographies of American Women. Vintage Books, 1992. Elliot, Jeffrey. Conversations with Maya Angelou. University of Mississippi, 1989. Evans, Mari. Black women writers (1950-1980): a critical evaluation. University of Michigan: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1984. Megna-Wallace, Joanne. Understanding I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Student Casebook to Issues, Sources, and Historical Documents. University of Michigan: Greenwood Press, 1998. Smith, Sidonie. Where I’m bound: patterns of slavery and freedom in Black American autobiography. University of Michigan: Greenwood Press, 1974. Read More