The Heart of a Woman

Genre

All seven of Angelou's installments of her life story are in the tradition of African-American autobiography. Starting with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou challenges the usual structure of the autobiography by critiquing, changing, and expanding the genre.[23] Angelou said in 1989 that she is the only serious writer to choose autobiography to express herself,[24] but she reports not one person's story, but the collective's.[25] Scholar Selwyn R. Cudjoe writes that Angelou is representative of the convention in African-American autobiography as a public gesture that speaks for an entire group of people.[26] Her use of devices common in fictional writing, such as dialog, characterization and thematic development, has led some reviewers to categorize her books as autobiographical fiction.[27]

All of Angelou's autobiographies conform to the autobiography's standard structure: they are written by a single author, they are chronological, and they contain elements of character, technique, and theme.[28] In a 1983 interview with literature critic Claudia Tate, Angelou calls her books autobiographies,[29] and later acknowledges that she follows the slave narrative tradition of "speaking in the first-person singular talking about the first-person plural, always saying 'I' meaning 'we'".[7] Lupton compares The Heart of a Woman with other autobiographies, and states that for the first time in Angelou's series, she is able to present herself as a model for successful living. However, Angelou's "woman's heart"[2]—her perspective as a woman with concerns about her self-esteem and the conflicts with her lovers and her son—is what makes her autobiography different.[2] Angelou's feelings as described in The Heart of a Woman, which Lupton calls Angelou's "most introspective" book, are what dictates the book's form.[2]

Angelou recognizes that there are fictional aspects to all her books, which differentiate her work from more traditional "truthful" autobiographies.[30] Her approach parallels the conventions of many African-American autobiographies written during the abolitionist period in the US when truth was often censored for purposes of self-protection.[31] Lyman B. Hagen places Angelou in the tradition of African-American autobiography, but insists that she has created a unique interpretation of the autobiographical form.[32] In a 1998 interview with journalist George Plimpton, Angelou discusses her writing process, and "the sometimes slippery notion of truth in nonfiction" and memoirs.[33] When asked if she changed the truth to improve her story, she states, "Sometimes I make a diameter from a composite of three or four people, because the essence in only one person is not sufficiently strong to be written about."[33] Angelou has never admitted to changing the facts in her stories. Hagen states, "One can assume that 'the essence of the data' is present in Angelou's work", and that Angelou uses aspects of fiction writing to make her depictions of events and people more interesting. Angelou's long-time editor, Robert Loomis, said that she could rewrite any of her books by changing the order of her facts to make a different impact on the reader.[34]

The Heart of a Woman is similar to Angelou's previous volumes because it is narrated from the intimate point of view of a woman and a mother, but by this time, she can refer to events that occurred in her past books. Angelou has become a serial autobiographer, something Lupton calls "a narrative structure unsurpassed in American autobiography".[2] Angelou successfully draws upon her previous works, and can build upon the themes she has already explored;[35] for example, Angelou threatens the gang leader who has been threatening her son, a powerful incident when considered in light of Angelou's rape in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Lupton calls Angelou's violent behavior an "unconscious effort to rewrite her own history".[35]


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