Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird

Maya Angelou was one of the most influential literary phenomenons, who created numerous inspiring works and paved the way for many African Americans, while facing discrimination and prejudices. She gave people hope through her countless works of literature and gave people an understanding to what it really feels like to be an African American. Throughout her life, Maya had a very traumatic childhood. Her parents, Vivian Baxter Johnson and Bailey Johnson, had gotten a divorce when she was 3 and she as well as her brother, were sent to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. There, she felt the prejudices that the town was filled of. On a visit to her mother, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend at the age of 7. He was later sent to prison but released and was killed by Maya’s uncles as an act of vengeance for his crime. She felt as though her words she used to testify against

She helped him establish the Organization of Afro-American Unity, which later disbanded when Malcom was assassinated in 1965. Maya also became friends with Martin Luther King Jr in the 1960s. He was assassinated on her birthday in 1968 which made her stop wanting to celebrate her birthday for a number of years. With the two tragic deaths in Maya’s life, she wrote a memoir indicating the experiences that happened throughout her life.”I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” talks about the childhood that Maya had, all the way to the birth of her son. This poem became the first nonfiction bestseller written by an African American female. This was a New York Times running bestseller for two years. The hardships that she encountered in her life made her strive to make change in the world by writing poetry and books about her life and feelings. Most of her works have shown people the true emotions and feelings of what it means to be a African American female in one of the most discriminating times in