English and Literature

Published by James Taylor

Saraswati, Somanand. “The Singing Cure-healing Process in Maya Angelou’s” Caged Bird”.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.2 (2019): 10-10.

This source is connected with the famous book of Do Boi ‘The Souls of Black Folk called Slavery as “a national trauma, and an intensively personal trauma” (Boi 1967). The pain and suffering of slavery were such that it became part of the unconscious mind. For Maya Angelou, growing up as a black and woman, in such times, in the rural south; there was no escape from racial prejudice.

However, the first volume of her autobiography, “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” does not just shows her past but also reveals a collective past of blacks in American Society. She also uses a powerful channel of life narrative and through this reconstructs the history in a way which gives a healing process. It could be sensed through the title, where although the bird is still caged like it was caged in Dunbar’s Symphony, Anglo’s bird sings, has a voice and self-realization. This paper would again try to explore the healing elements in her first autobiography and how it reconstructs history.

Arunkumar, V., and P. Kumaresan. “Burden of being Black in a Racist Land: A Study of Maya Angelou’s.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.1 (2019): 14-14.

In this article, Maya Angelou’s works delineate a racist society where the blacks are dehumanized and being mistreated only because of their blackness. They somewhere in the fragile corners of their egos often fell belittled and ill-treated, and a nagging sense of self-rejection always haunts them. The Negros had survived centuries of inhuman treatment and retained their humanity but at the same time prepared for the worst.

Angelou also considers not only that racism is against the blacks, but also the vulgarities against any human being racial freedom were equated with the redemption of black manhood. But racism is more harmful to black women, as is revealed in Angelou’s writings. Her autobiographies are sublime creations, which bring about a particular arrangement of pains and pleasure, failure and success. Her autobiographical narratives describe the evolution of personal consciousness where Angelou raises high to become the voice of universal knowledge.

Shah, Mrs. Palak. “Hope and Courage in Maya Angelou’s Poems ‘Still I Rise’and ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 6.12 (2018): 10-10.

This article tries to reflect ideas through her poems Still I rise and I know why the caged bird sings. The poems mirror the courage of the poet and her hope for the better tomorrow. The poet’s thoughts and a positive attitude are revealed in the research work. Her poems reflect Angelou’s optimistic nature. They are the inspiration for people not to give up and fight until the end. The poem was also the center of an advertising campaign for the United Negro College Fund. The theme of the poem also focuses on a hopeful determination to rise above difficulty and discouragement. Angelou focuses on the same issues as her previous volumes, including love loneliness and southern racism, but with the added twist of the nature of women and the importance of the family.

Kim, Sun-ok. “Creating the Black Female Subject and Rewriting Black Womanhood in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” 25.3 (2018): 193-214.

This paper aims to explain to explore a new black female subject in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and read the protagonist’s subject formation as part of the autobiographical subject’s constructing her subjectivity by organizing memories and rewriting black womanhood distorted by the dominant racial ideology.

Caged Bird primarily deals with a coming-of-age story of a marginalized black girl who grows up to be a black woman with positive sexual and racial identities through the journey to establish a worthwhile subject. Abandoned by her parents, faced with racist oppression of the South and raped by her mother’s boyfriend at age 8, Maya suffers from psychological instability, loss of self-esteem, and identity crisis.

However, she overcomes all the familial, sexual and racial challenges, constructing a definite black female subject in the black community, especially in the relationships with black adult women. Angelou, arranging and organizing her memories and experiences, creates an active, independent, dignified black female subject and rewrites black womanhood distorted by the dominant culture.

By rewriting black womanhood against the negative stereotypes and connecting black women’s positive subjectivities, the autobiographer Angelou, through Maya’s subject formation, creates a new hybridized black female subject who is continuously growing and developing.

Tait, Gabriel B., and George L. Daniels. “Are They the Greatest? A Visual Comparative Analysis of Muhammad Ali and Maya Angelou Published on American Newspaper Front Pages.” Visual Communication Quarterly 25.3 (2018): 143-155.

‘Woman Work’ by Maya Angelou- The article aimed to elements of nature in the poem entitled “Woman Work” which was written by Maya Angelou. She used quality as the object of escapism. The basic theories of the research were symbol, imagery, and figures of speech. They were two figures of speech as the poetic devices in the poem: personification and apostrophe. They were two supporting theories that dealt with the topic, i.e., nature and escapism. There were also two approaches that were used: structural and formalistic approaches. Library research is the technique of collecting data.

The finding of the research was that the speaker of the poem endowed the elements of nature with human qualities in an attempt to feel less lonely. In the absence of human company, it was the sun, the rain, the snow, dewdrops, the wind, the sky, mountains, oceans, leaves, stones, “star shine” and “moon glow” that were her friends. “Woman Work” was a domestic poem depicting the typical routine life of a woman who performed her daily chores effectively and then yearned for a fantastic break amidst the elements of nature to give her strength and comfort.

This work focuses on the struggle for Black identity formation by African-Americas which has always been a continuous task, despite their constant state of repression. This research aims at revealing the excruciating ordeals of African-Americans in the hands of not just racist Whites but in the hands of black males as well.

This research goes further to show how the black female character is struggling to assert herself from patriarchal subjugation. This research uses both primary and secondary sources of data to carry out a detailed exploration of the text under study. For the primary sources, a review of selected poems of Maya Angelou will be used.

While the secondary sources consist of studies that other researchers have made, concerning this research, this research adopts two theoretical criticisms of the Feminist literary theory and the Marxist literary criticism. These theories have been able to promote the status of subjugated black females, by portraying them in a positive light, making them conscious of their capabilities and rights and that they are not inferior to the males. It goes further to strive for class equality so that African-Americas like European-Americans can enjoy equal rights and privileges. This study reveals that though African-Americas females suffer doubly as a result of their race and gender, their resilience at forging for themselves a sense of self amidst oppression remains intact. This paper concludes with a look into how Maya weaves imagery and symbols into Ebonics to forge a unique and belligerent linguistic culture for African-Americans.

Kumaresan, P. “Hope Amid Despair: A Study of Maya Angelou’s Autobiographies.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 6.9 (2018): 10-10.

This article talks about Black Women Autobiographies which were expanded in the early 1960s as a subgenre of Black Autobiography. The Civil Rights Movement and Woman’s Movement emerged in the 1960s also accelerated the black woman’s activism. The black women having the opportunity to dispose of their prejudiced image could express themselves by the help of autobiography. African American mother can be seen from numerous aspects, often contradictory points of view.

She is a woman, who could be analyzed from psychology or gender studies; she is a feminist, a Civil Rights fighter or an artist. Every black mother has a lot of faces and layers, and she has to play every legitimate role. To draw an explicit picture of an African American mother, one has to take into account all the hardships and sufferings she, her mothers and grandmothers were forced to face. Maya Angelou is a significant writer who has given works in Black American Women Autobiography. Angelou mirrors the lives of black women taking into consideration of her own life. Black mother plays an integrating role in her serious of autobiography.

Work Cited

Kim, Sun-ok. “Creating the Black Female Subject and Rewriting Black Womanhood in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” 25.3 (2018): 193-214.

Kumaresan, P. “Hope amid Despair: A Study of Maya Angelou’s Autobiographies.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 6.9 (2018): 10-10.

Kumaresan, P. “Strenuous Motherhood: A Study of Maya Angelou’s Autobiographies.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.2 (2019): 14-14.

Saraswati, Somanand. “The Singing Cure-healing Process in Maya Angelou’s” Caged Bird”.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 7.2 (2019): 10-10.

Shah, Mrs Palak. “Hope and Courage in Maya Angelou’s Poems ‘Still I Rise’and ‘I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings’.” IJELLH (International Journal of English Language, Literature in Humanities) 6.12 (2018): 10-10.