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    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
    Ebook37 pages34 minutes

    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students.This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateAug 21, 2015
    ISBN9781535825412
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Gale

      4

      I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

      Maya Angelou

      1970

      Introduction

      I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first—and many say the best—of five autobiographical volumes the gifted African American author, Maya Angelou, wrote. It is a remarkably vivid retelling of the turbulent events of her childhood, during which she shuttled back and forth between dramatically different environments in rural Stamps, Arkansas, slightly raunchy St. Louis, Missouri, and glitzy San Francisco, California. It is also the annals of her relationships with a rich and diverse cast of characters. Chief among these are her determined, strict, and wise grandmother Annie Henderson; her crippled and bitter uncle Willie Johnson; her bright and imaginative brother Bailey Johnson Jr.; her playboy father Bailey Johnson; and her beautiful, brilliant, and worldly mother, Vivian Baxter Johnson. A host of other unforgettable characters fill out the cast for this earnest, sometimes sardonic retelling of the drama of Maya Angelou's growing-up years. During these years, she struggled against the odds of being black at a time when prejudice, especially in the South, was at its height. But most of all her story is the story of discovering who she is—of working her way through a multifaceted identity crisis. The source of the title of the book is a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar entitled Sympathy. I know why the caged bird sings, writes the poet. When he beats his bars and he would be free. It is a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings. I know why the caged bird sings!

      Author Biography

      When Maya Angelou was three and her brother, Bailey, was four, her parents divorced and shipped the two young children to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson, in the stark, dusty black section of Stamps, Arkansas. Annie had status in the black community: She owned and ran a successful general store that supplied the black community with food and sundries. She also owned an extra house that she rented to a family of poor white people who occasionally came to the store to taunt her and her family.

      During the Depression, Mrs. Johnson (also known as Sister Johnson) was able to lend money to both blacks and whites in need of

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