I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Themes

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first and most highly acclaimed among the six volumes of autobiographies by Maya Angelou. It tells us about her childhood and the first sixteen years of her life. She gives a detailed description of her life spent in Stamps, Arkansas with her brother Bailey; her disciplined grandmother, Annie Henderson; and her uncle Willie. The main issues delineated in this book are homelessness, identity, displacement, and racial discrimination as well as protest. It tells us about varied experiences Angelou had during her stay at Stamps. She met people of different races and suffered humiliation being Black at a time when the society was absolutely biased, prejudiced and deeply patriarchal. It was during this phase of her life when she had to psychologically struggle very hard to find her identity. It tells us about the brutality of rape she experienced at the age of eight which sent her into a state of forced silence for five years. At the age of sixteen Angelou becomes an unwed mother. Gather Together in My Name deals mainly with the theme of motherhood detailing …show more content…
Her profession at this particular time of life was that of a stage performer. Themes like race, music, travel, survival, motherhood, and conflict continue in this volume as well. The conflict between becoming a good mother and a successful survivor, between Black and the White keeps recurring throughout the book. Both good and bad moments were faced by Angelou. Her dancing career flourished but somewhere during the fight for survival she became isolated from her son. Her married life ended as she later lost her dearest grandmother forever. She left no stone unturned to bring up her child and felt guilty of providing the same circumstances to him by keeping him at his grandmother’s the way she and Bailey were sent to their grandmother’s place to