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    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird"
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird"
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird"
    Ebook30 pages19 minutes

    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird"

    By Gale and Cengage

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    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry 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 Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateMay 15, 2018
    ISBN9781410393630
    A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird"

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      A Study Guide for Maya Angelou's "Caged Bird" - Gale

      18

      Caged Bird

      Maya Angelou

      1983

      Introduction

      Published in 1983, the poem Caged Bird repeats a familiar symbol for the author. It is contained in the title of Maya Angelou's first autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, published in 1970; the title is a line from Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem Sympathy. The symbol appears again in one of her last projects, Caged Bird Songs. The poem explores the themes of oppression in society, anger, hope, and freedom. The juxtaposition of the trapped and untamed birds can easily represent the repression of African Americans compared with whites, but many readers see the caged bird as symbolic of anyone restricted by society.

      Like much of Angelou's work, Caged Bird is an unstructured poem that uses techniques such as rhyme and alliteration to create focus. Additionally, repetition keeps specific words and phrases in the minds of the readers. Caged Bird originally appeared in Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, published by Random House in 1983, and then in Maya Angelou: The Complete Poetry, published by Random House in 2015. It can also be found online at https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/48989/caged-bird and https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/caged-bird-21/.

      Author Biography

      On April 4, 1928, Marguerite Johnson was born in St. Louis, Missouri. In childhood she was nicknamed Maya because her brother, Bailey, could not say Marguerite. She and Bailey were sent to live with their grandmother, Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas, when their parents divorced. Four years later, when Angelou was seven, her father came and collected them and returned them to their mother in St. Louis. Her mother's boyfriend sexually assaulted her when she

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