52 years after the publication of her first and most notable work, the autobiographical book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the impact of Angelou’s life and influences can still be seen today. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings addresses not only the early years of her personal life, but also the turbulent landscape of the 1960s American Civil Rights era.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of seven autobiographical works which Maya Angelou was continuously producing until her death in 2014, details the first 16 years of her life. Born in St. Louis on April 4th 1928, Angelou spent a significant portion of her early years living with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. These formative years, living in the deeply racist American south in the 1930s, had a profound impact on her writing. Her experiences with sexual abuse at a very young age left her mute for five years, but her voice from that time, which is now presented in this book, has enabled countless others to identify with her experiences and allowed their voices to also be heard.
Civil rights in the 1960s
Angelou’s later life in the 1950s and 60s provided a relief against which to present her childhood, while she developed the intellectual prowess to create her voice. Having spent her young adulthood as a dancer in San Francisco and New York City, Angelou moved to Egypt and then Ghana in the early 1960s, one of many African-Americans to do so after Ghana became independent in 1957. Working as a journalist, writing for The African Review and the Ghanaian Times, she refined her versatility as a reporter as well as a creative.
Whilst in Ghana, Angelou formed friendships with the two leading American civil rights activists Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr, the latter of whom inspired her move back to the US in 1968, just months before his assassination. Having returned to the US, Angelou took on a position in the movement, initially as a coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Her role in the civil rights movement influenced her desire to provide representation for African-American women in particular.
Prose, poetry and performance
The spark for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings came from another key influence in her life, the writer James Baldwin. Baldwin mentored Angelou in her own writing and suggested that she take on the challenge of producing an autobiographical piece that also stands up as a piece of literature. The result of this challenge was her first book, which has been said to have redefined the genre of autobiography by utilising novelistic elements like thematic development and dialogue.
As well as her biographies, Angelou was also a notable poet, with several poetry collections to her name, including her first collection Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ‘fore I Diiie, also reflecting the experiences of her earlier years working in nightclubs.
Prolific in the variety of work she produced, Angelou not only wrote prose and poetry but also wrote plays for stage and screen, occasionally starring as an actor. She also performed her own poetry, notably ‘On the Pulse of Morning‘ for Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993, and winning three Grammys for spoken word albums.
An enduring legacy
Angelou’s overriding impact was one of representation, giving a platform not only to previously unheard African-American voices but also to women and survivors of traumatic experiences. Internationally well-respected, Angelou’s work has spread across the globe, being translated into many languages and published on multiple continents. In the US, Angelou was not only honoured at Bill Clinton’s inauguration but was also awarded the presidential medal of freedom by Barack Obama in 2010. Her academic influence was also recognised when she was offered a professorship at Wake Forest University in 1982.
Angelou’s ability to capture, in her writing, her childhood and later experiences, along with the waves of change occurring in the 1960s and throughout the rest of the 20th and early 21st century, gives a voice to those who continue to be ignored. Even in the seven years since her death, the legacy of her influence endures today, with many of the issues she confronted gaining more and more presence in the public eye.