Maya Angelou

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Maya Angelou

• North Senior Academy

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Maya Angelou

• North Senior Academy

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Maya Angelou
I Know why the caged bird sings

• North Senior Academy

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Prolific writer of books, plays, poetry, speeches
• Autobiographies
• I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
• Gather Together in My Name (1974)
• Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like
  Christmas (1976)
• The Heart of a Woman (1981)
• All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986)
• A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002)

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Genre Autobiography / Autobiographical novel
• Published 1969
• Narrative Mode Angelou speaks in the first
  person
• Time 1930s 1950s
• Place Stamps, Arkansas St. Louis, Missouri
  Oakland, California San Francisco, California

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Themes and Motifs
• Racism and Segregation
• Displacement
• Survivors
• Resistance to Racism
• Strong Black Women
• Love of literature
• Names and Naming

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Quote
• If growing up is painful for the Southern Black
  girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust
  on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an
  unnecessary insult.

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Quote
• If Bailey was talking so fast he forgot to
  stutter, he forgot to scratch his head and clean
  his fingernails with his teeth. He was away in a
  mystery, locked in the enigma that young Southern
  Black boys start to unravel, start to try to
  unravel, from seven years old to death. The
  humorless puzzle of inequality and hate.

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Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

• Quote
• The Black female is assaulted in her tender years
  by all those common forces of nature at the same
  time that she is caught in the tripartite
  crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical
  hate and Black lack of power. The fact that the
  adult American Negro female emerges a formidable
  character is often met with amazement, distaste
  and even belligerence.

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Maya Angelou
I Know why the caged bird sings

• North Senior Academy

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Maya Angelou
I Know why the caged bird sings

• North Senior Academy