I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Maya Angelou

Identity

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 male prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

–Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings[50]

In the course of Caged Bird, Maya, who has been described as "a symbolic character for every black girl growing up in America",[1] goes from being a victim of racism with an inferiority complex to a self-aware individual who responds to racism with dignity and a strong sense of her own identity. Feminist scholar Maria Lauret states that the "formation of female cultural identity" is woven into the book's narrative, setting Maya up as "a role model for Black women".[51] Scholar Liliane Arensberg calls this presentation Angelou's "identity theme" and a major motif in Angelou's narrative.[52] Angelou told a interviewer, however, that she did not set out, while writing Caged Bird, thinking out her own life or identity, but that she was "thinking about a particular time in which I lived and the influence 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".[31]

Maya's unsettled life in Caged Bird suggests her sense of self "as perpetually in the process of becoming, of dying and being reborn, in all its ramifications".[52] Angelou begins to describe her changing identity in the book's early pages, with her depiction of an embarrassing experience during an Easter service at church, when Maya painfully realizes that her fantasy of becoming white will never happen. As Dolly McPherson states, the scene graphically re-creates "the dynamics of many young black girls' disillusionment and imprisonment in American society", which gives the message to Maya and girls like her that physical beauty is defined in terms of whiteness. As a displaced person, her pain is intensified by her awareness of that displacement.[53] Arensberg states that Maya's displacement, or rootlessness, as well as her geographic movements and temporary residences throughout the book, are formative aspects of Maya's identity and help her develop "a stoic flexibility"[54] that becomes a way for her to both protect herself against and deal with the world around her. According to Arensberg, the flexibility is "both a blessing and a curse: it enables her to adapt to various and changing environments, but it also keeps her forever threatened with loss or breakdown of her identity".[55]

Indeed, Angelou's descriptions of her younger self seem almost entirely composed of negatives: she is not wanted by her parents, who hold over her the unspoken but everpresent threat of banishment; she is not beautiful or articulate like her brother, Bailey; she is too introverted and passive to assert herself on her environment; and finally, she is a child in a world of enigmatic adults, and a black girl in a world created by and for the benefit of white men.

– Scholar Liliane K. Arensberg[54]

Maya fantasizes that she is white because she feels unloved, especially by her parents, who have rejected her; both she and her brother deal with their abandonment by imaging that their mother was dead.[56] McPherson also states that Angelou's statement in Caged Bird, "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"[57] characterize important parts of Angelou's life and "provide wide-ranging, significant themes" of the book.[46] McPherson states that unlike Christ, whose death and resurrection was being celebrated, it was impossible for Maya to be "born into another life where she will be white and perfect and wonderful",[46] although Angelou creatively uses Christian mythology and theology to present the Biblical themes of death, regeneration, and rebirth in the book[58] and "skillfully re-creates the psychic, intellectual, and emotional patterns that identify her individual consciousness and experience".[59] Maya's childhood is shaped by her religiously devout grandmother, who although was not emotionally demonstrative, Maya knew that she was loved by her, which strengthened Maya as she grew and developed into childhood and early adolescence.[60] As Angelou wrote in Caged Bird, "a deep-brooding love hung over everything [Momma] touched".[61] Liliane Arensberg finds it significant that the first vignette Angelou presents in Caged Bird is her embarrassing incident at the Easter Sunday church service; even though the incident is out of order chronologically, Angelou considers it "an epiphanic moment of her youth"[62] because it presents Maya's identity as a young child, her blackness and her outcast status. Angelou compares the repurposed dress Maya wore to the crepe paper at the back of a hearse, which represented Maya's body and the death of her fantasy about whiteness. As Arensberg states, Maya is forced to acknowledge her blackness and the "malevolent force beyond her control that dictates her personal and racial identity".[62]

As Lauret indicates, Angelou and other female writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s used autobiography to reimagine ways of writing about women's lives and identities in a male-dominated society. Up until this time, Black women were not depicted realistically in African-American fiction and autobiography, meaning that Angelou was one of the first Black autobiographers to present, as Cudjoe put it, "a powerful and authentic signification of womanhood in her quest for understanding and love rather than for bitterness and despair".[63] Lauret sees a connection between Angelou's autobiographies, which Lauret calls "fictions of subjectivity" and "feminist first-person narratives", and fictional first-person narratives (such as The Women's Room by Marilyn French and The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing) written during the same period. As French and Lessing do in their novels, Angelou employs the narrator as protagonist and depends upon "the illusion of presence in their mode of signification".[64] As a displaced girl, Maya's pain is worsened by an awareness of her displacement. She is "the forgotten child", and must come to terms with "the unimaginable reality" of being unloved and unwanted;[58] she lives in a hostile world that defines beauty in terms of whiteness and that rejects her simply because she is a Black girl. Maya internalizes the rejection she has experienced – her belief in her own ugliness was "absolute".[65] McPherson believes that the concept of family, or what she calls "kinship concerns", in Angelou's books must be understood in the light of the children's displacement at the beginning of Caged Bird.[66] Being sent away from their parents was a psychological rejection, and resulted in a quest for love, acceptance, and self-worth for both Maya and Bailey.[67]

Angelou uses her many roles, incarnations, and identities throughout her books to illustrate how oppression and personal history are interrelated. For example, in Caged Bird, Angelou demonstrates the "racist habit"[51] of renaming African Americans, as shown when her white employer insists on calling her "Mary". Angelou describes the employer's renaming as the "hellish horror of being 'called out of [one's] name'".[68] Scholar Debra Walker King calls it a racist insult and an assault against Maya's race and self-image.[69] The renaming emphasizes Maya's feelings of inadequacy and denigrates her identity, individuality, and uniqueness. Maya understands that she is being insulted and rebels by breaking Mrs. Cullinan's favorite dish, but feels vindicated when, as she leaves her employer's home, Mrs. Cullinan finally gets her name right.[70][71] Another incident in the book that solidifies Maya's identity is her trip to Mexico with her father, when she has to drive a car for the first time. Contrasted with her experience in Stamps, Maya is finally "in control of her fate".[72] This experience is central to Maya's growth, as is the incident that immediately follows it, her short period of homelessness after arguing with her father's girlfriend. These two incidents give Maya a knowledge of self-determination and confirm her self-worth.[72] Her experience of homelessness also teaches that "outside the barriers of race, all men and women are the same"[73] and confirms her commitment to her personal growth. McPherson connects Maya's experiences in California and Mexico with her determination and accomplishment of becoming the first streetcar conductor in San Francisco several months later.[73]

Scholar Mary Burgher believes that female Black autobiographers like Angelou have debunked the stereotypes of African-American mothers as "breeder[s] and matriarch[s]", and have presented them as having "a creative and personally fulfilling role".[74] Lupton believes that Angelou's plot construction and character development were influenced by the same mother/child motif as is found in the work of Harlem Renaissance poet Jessie Fauset.[75] For the first five years of her life, Maya thinks of herself as an orphan and finds comfort in the thought that her mother is dead. Maya's feelings for and relationship with her mother, whom she blames for her abandonment, express themselves in ambivalence and "repressed violent aggression".[76] For example, Maya and her brother destroy the first Christmas gifts sent to them by their mother. These strong feelings are not resolved until the end of the book, when Maya becomes a mother herself, and her mother finally becomes the nurturing presence for which Maya has longed.[77] The two main maternal influences on Maya's life change as well; Vivian becomes a more active participant, while Momma becomes less effective as Maya, by becoming a mother herself, moves from childhood to adulthood.[78] McPherson states that as the book ends, Maya is no longer a displaced child; as a new mother, she takes control of her life and fully accepts her womanhood.[79]

Racism

Stamps, Arkansas, as depicted in Caged Bird, has very little "social ambiguity"; it is a racist world divided between Black and white, male and female.[39] Als characterizes the division as "good and evil", and notes how Angelou's witness of the evil in her society, which was directed at Black women, shaped Angelou's young life and informed her views into adulthood.[39] Angelou uses the metaphor of a bird struggling to escape its cage, described in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, as a prominent symbol throughout her series of autobiographies.[80][81] Like elements within a prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou's confinement resulting from racism and oppression,[82] forces that were outside Maya's control or comprehension.[83] The caged bird metaphor also invokes the "supposed contradiction of the bird singing in the midst of its struggle".[81] Scholar Ernece B. Kelley calls Caged Bird a "gentle indictment of white American womanhood";[84] Hagen expands it further, stating that the book is "a dismaying story of white dominance".[84] In the Stamps of Caged Bird, although "segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what Whites looked like"[85] and Blacks rarely interacted with them, the white world was a constant threat and Blacks were expected to behave in a certain way in order to survive.[83]

Caged Bird has been called "perhaps the most aesthetically satisfying autobiography written in the years immediately following the Civil Rights era".[86] Critic Pierre A. Walker expresses a similar sentiment, and places it in the African-American literature tradition of political protest.[3] Angelou demonstrates, through her involvement with the Black community of Stamps, her presentation of vivid and realistic racist characters, and "the vulgarity of white Southern attitudes toward African Americans",[87] her developing understanding of the rules for surviving in a racist society. Angelou's autobiographies, beginning with Caged Bird, contain a sequence of lessons about resisting oppression. The sequence she describes leads Angelou, as the protagonist, from "helpless rage and indignation to forms of subtle resistance, and finally to outright and active protest".[3]

Walker insists that Angelou's treatment of racism is what gives her autobiographies their thematic unity and underscores one of their central themes: the injustice of racism and how to fight it. In Angelou's depiction of the "powhitetrash" incident, Maya reacts with rage, indignation, humiliation, and helplessness.[88] As Braxton put it, the white and female children "deliberately exploit their protected status to intimidate and humiliate" Maya's family. Braxton also considers the incident an implied threat towards the men in the family.[26] Momma teaches Maya how they can maintain their personal dignity and pride while dealing with racism, and that it is an effective basis for actively protesting and combating racism.[88] Walker calls Momma's way a "strategy of subtle resistance";[88] Dolly McPherson calls it "the dignified course of silent endurance"[89] and "a pivotal experience in her initiation"[83] of Maya's awareness about her place in the racist world. McPherson, who considers the incident "a dramatic re-enactment of the kind of spiritual death and regeneration Angelou experienced during the shaping of her development",[90] also states that the incident taught Maya how her grandmother was able to survive and triumph psychologically in a hostile environment.[83] Not only was it a depiction of the tensions between Blacks and whites during the period, it also depicted how Momma was able to protest, transcend the children's behavior towards her, and preserve her own dignity.[83]

The caged bird singswith a fearful trillof things unknownbut longed for stilland his tune is heardon the distant hillfor the caged birdsings of freedom.

—The final stanza of Maya Angelou's poem "Caged Bird"[91]

Angelou portrays Momma as a realist whose patience, courage, and silence ensured the survival and success of those who came after her.[92] Maya responds assertively when subjected to demeaning treatment by Mrs. Cullinan, her white employer, and, later on in the book, breaks the race barrier to become the first Black streetcar operator in San Francisco.[71][93][note 2] McPherson states that Maya's experience with Mrs. Cullinan places her "into a clearer awareness of social reality and into a growing consciousness of self-worth".[94] Mrs. Cullinan's attempt to change Maya's name to fit her own convenience, which is a refusal to acknowledge Maya's humanity, also "echoes the larger tradition of American racism that attempts to prescribe the nature and limitations of a black person's identity".[94] Maya stands up for her individuality and value by deliberately breaking Mrs. Cullinan's heirloom china.[95]

Angelou's description of the strong and cohesive black community of Stamps also demonstrates how African Americans subvert repressive institutions to withstand racism.[96] McPherson states that Angelou's depiction of the economic displacement of Black cotton field workers, who gather at Momma's store before and after work and could never get ahead despite their hard work, demonstrates how the Black community nurtures its members and helps them survive in an antagonistic environment. Angelou describes other incidences that demonstrates the strength and unity in Stamps as well.[97] As McPherson puts it, "Unlike the white American, in order for the individual black American to be self-reliant, he or she must rely on the community".[98] Liliane Arensberg insists that Angelou demonstrates how she, as a Black child, evolves out of her "racial hatred",[62] common in the works of many contemporary Black novelists and autobiographers. McPherson states that Caged Bird described centuries-long traditions, developed in Africa and during slavery, that taught Black children to never resist "the idea that whites were better, cleaner, or more intelligent than blacks".[99] At first Maya wishes that she could become white, since growing up Black in white America is dangerous; later she sheds her self-loathing and embraces a strong racial identity.[62] Both Angelou's depiction of her community's reaction to the victorious Joe Louis fight and her elementary school graduation, in which they respond to a racist school official demeaning their future opportunities by proudly singing "Lift Every Voice and Sing", demonstrate the strength and resiliency of her community.[100]

Rape

Angelou's description of being raped as an eight-year-old child overwhelms the autobiography, although it is presented briefly in the text.[2] Opal Moore calls Angelou's graphic and complicated depiction of rape and incest "the center and bottom"[101] of the autobiography and states the rape must be understood within the context of the entire book; everything that happens to Maya in it "should be understood against the ravaging of rape".[102] For Moore, the rape "raises issues of trust, truth, and lie, love, and the naturalness of a child's craving for human contact, language and understanding, and the confusion engendered by the power disparities that necessarily exist between children and adults".[103] Scholar Mary Vermillion compares Angelou's treatment of rape to in Caged Bird to Harriet Jacobs' in her 1861 autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. According to Vermillion, one major difference between Angelou and Jacobs is the way somatophobia, which Vermillion defines as the "fear and disdain for the body",[104] especially the female body, is depicted in their books. Angelou, for example, is freer to portray her rape, her body, and her sexuality than Jacobs because she does not have to deal with the 19th century patriarchal view of "true womanhood".[105] Jacobs describes herself as beautiful and sexually desirable, but Angelou, as a child and young adult, thinks she is ugly. Jacobs and Angelou both use rape as a metaphor for the suffering of African Americans; Jacobs uses the metaphor to critique slaveholding culture, while Angelou uses it to first internalize, then challenge, 20th-century racist conceptions of the Black female body. Angelou connects her rape with the suffering of the poor and the subjection of her race.[105] and "represents the black girl's difficulties in controlling, understanding, and respecting both her body and her words".[106] Vermillion also connects the violation of Maya's body to her self-imposed muteness because she believes that her lie during the trial is responsible for her rapist's death.[106] McPherson evaluates the rape in Caged Bird in light of how it affected Maya's identity, and how her displacement from the dangerous but comfortable setting of Stamps to her mother's chaotic and unfamiliar world of St. Louis contributes to Maya's trauma and withdrawal into herself.[107]

It should be clear, however, that this portrayal of rape is hardly titillating or "pornographic." It raises issues of trust, truth and lies, love, the naturalness of a child's craving for human contact, language and understanding, and the confusion engendered by the power disparities that necessarily exist between children and adults.

–Opal Moore[103]

Arensberg, who blames Maya's vulnerability on her previous experiences of neglect, abandonment, and lack of parental love, notes that Maya's rape is connected to the theme of death in Caged Bird, as Mr. Freeman threatens to kill Maya's brother Bailey if she tells anyone about the rape. After Maya lies during Freeman's trial, stating that the rape was the first time he touched her inappropriately, Freeman is murdered (presumably by one of Maya's uncles) and Maya sees her words as a bringer of death. As a result, she resolves never to speak to anyone other than Bailey. Angelou connects the violation of her body and the devaluation of her words through the depiction of her self-imposed, five-year-long silence.[108] As Angelou later stated, "I thought if I spoke, my mouth would just issue out something that would kill people, randomly, so it was better not to talk".[109]

African-American literature scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe calls Angelou's depiction of the rape "a burden" of Caged Bird: a demonstration of "the manner in which the Black female is violated in her tender years and ... the 'unnecessary insult' of Southern girlhood in her movement to adolescence".[110] Vermillion goes further, maintaining that a Black woman who writes about her rape risks reinforcing negative stereotypes about her race and gender.[111] When Joanne Braxton asked Angelou decades later how she was able to survive the trauma she experienced, Angelou explained it by stating, "I can't remember a time when I wasn't loved by somebody".[112] She also told Braxton that she thought about the rape everyday and that she wrote about the experience because it was the truth and because she wanted to demonstrate the complexities of rape for both the victim and the rapist. She also wanted to prevent it from happening to someone else, so that anyone who had been raped might gain understanding, forgive herself, and not blame herself.[113]

Literacy

As Lupton points out, all of Angelou's autobiographies, especially Caged Bird and its immediate sequel Gather Together in My Name, are "very much concerned with what [Angelou] knew and how she learned it". Lupton compares Angelou's informal education with the education of other Black writers of the twentieth century, who did not earn official degrees and depended upon the "direct instruction of African American cultural forms".[115] Angelou's quest for learning and literacy parallels "the central myth of black culture in America":[116] that freedom and literacy are connected. Angelou is influenced by writers introduced to her by Mrs. Flowers during her self-imposed muteness, including Edgar Allan Poe and William Shakespeare. Angelou states, early in Caged Bird, that she, as the Maya character, "met and fell in love with William Shakespeare".[117] Mary Vermillion sees a connection between Maya's rape and Shakespeare's The Rape of Lucrece, which Vermillion calls "Angelou's most complex and subtle examination of Maya's attachment to white literary discourse"[118] and which Maya memorizes and recites when she regains her speech. Vermillion maintains that Maya's attachment to Lucrece indicates her attachment to the verbal and the literary, which leads her to ignore her corporeality and helps her find comfort in the poem's identification with suffering.[118] As Vermillion states, Maya must use the words she memorizes and recites to reconstruct her own body.[119] Maya finds novels and their characters complete and meaningful, so she uses them to make sense of her bewildering world. She is so involved in her fantasy world of books that she even uses them as a way to cope with her rape,[120] writing in Caged Bird, "...I was sure that any minute my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet would bust in the door and save me".[121]

According to Walker, the power of words is another theme that appears repeatedly in Caged Bird. For example, Maya chooses to not speak after her rape because she is afraid of the destructive power of words. Mrs. Flowers, by introducing her to classic literature and poetry, teaches her about the positive power of language and empowers Maya to speak again.[122] The importance of both the spoken and written word also appears repeatedly in Caged Bird and in all of Angelou's autobiographies.[note 3] Referring to the importance of literacy and methods of effective writing, Angelou once advised Oprah Winfrey in a 1993 interview to "do as West Africans do ... listen to the deep talk", or the "utterances existing beneath the obvious".[124] Liliane Arensberg says, "If there is one stable element in Angelou's youth it is [a] dependence upon books" and fiction, including The Lone Ranger, The Shadow, and Marvel Comics, and works by Shakespeare, Poe, Dunbar, Jane Austen, William Makepeace Thackeray, Samuel Johnson, Langston Hughes, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The public library is a "quiet refuge" to which Maya retreats when she experiences crisis. Novels and the characters in them became Maya's references for viewing and dealing with the world around her.[120] Hagen describes Angelou as a "natural story-teller", which "reflect[s] a good listener with a rich oral heritage".[125] Hagen also insists that Angelou's years of muteness provided her with this skill.[125] Books and poetry, with Mrs. Flowers' help, become Maya's "first life line"[126] and a way to cope with the trauma of her rape. First, Mrs. Flowers treats her as an individual, unconnected to another person, and then by encouraging Maya to memorize and recite poetry, gives her a "sense of power within herself, a transcendence over her immediate environment".[127] Mrs. Flowers' friendship awakens Maya's conscience, increases her perspective of what is around her and of the relationship between Black culture and the larger society, and teaches her about "the beauty and power of language".[127] Their friendship also inspires Maya to begin writing poetry and record her observations of the world around her.[128]

Angelou was also influenced by slave narratives, spirituals, poetry, and other autobiographies.[30] Angelou read through the Bible twice as a young child, and memorized many passages from it.[125] African-American spirituality, as represented by Angelou's grandmother, has influenced all of Angelou's writings, in the activities of the church community she first experiences in Stamps, in the sermonizing, and in scripture.[116] Hagen goes on to say that in addition to being influenced by rich literary form, Angelou has also been influenced by oral traditions. In Caged Bird, Mrs. Flowers encourages her to listen carefully to "Mother Wit",[129] which Hagen defines as the collective wisdom of the African-American community as expressed in folklore and humor.[130][note 4] Arensberg states that Angelou uses the literary technique of wit, humor, and irony to defeat her enemies by mocking them and using her adult narrative voice, she "retaliates for the tongue-tied child's helpful pain".[132] Arensberg goes on to state that Angelou even ridicules the child version of herself, although unlike other autobiographers, she avoids linking the child she was to the adult she became.[44] As Vermillion puts it, Angelou reembodies Maya following the trauma of her rape by critiquing her early dependency on white literary discourse; even though Angelou "is not content to let the mute, sexually abused, wishing-to-be-white Maya represent the black female body in her text".[133]

Angelou's humor in Caged Bird and in all her autobiographies is drawn from Black folklore and is used to demonstrate that in spite of severe racism and oppression, Black people thrive and are, as Hagen states, "a community of song and laughter and courage".[134] Hagen states that Angelou is able to make an indictment of institutionalized racism as she laughs at her flaws and the flaws of her community and "balances stories of black endurance of oppression against white myths and misperceptions".[134] Hagen also characterize Caged Bird as a "blues genre autobiography"[135] because it uses elements of blues music. These elements include the act of testimony when speaking of one's life and struggles, ironic understatement, and the use of natural metaphors, rhythms, and intonations. Hagen also sees elements of African American sermonizing in Caged Bird. Angelou's use of African-American oral traditions creates a sense of community in her readers, and identifies those who belong to it.[136] The vignettes in Caged Bird feature literary aspects such as oral story traditions and traditional religious beliefs and practices that depict African-American cultural life. For example, the story about Maya's racist employer Mrs. Cullinan parallels traditional African-American folklore, the significance, horror, and danger accompanied by the importance of naming in traditional society, and the practice of depriving slaves of their true names and cultural past.[137]