Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook

Perhaps more than other single text, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helped to establish the audience and the "mainstream" status of the renaissance in black women's writing, paving the way for the future success of Alice Walker, Terry McMillan, Sherley Anne Williams, and perhaps even Toni Morrison. With Bill Clinton's choice of Angelou as his inaugural poet, interest in her work continues to increase. This casebook will be a most useful guide that will see wide use in the areas where Angelou's autobiography shows a continuing and flourishing readership, especially American autobiography, African-American literature, and women's studies. Along with the introduction by Braxton and an interview with Angelou conducted especially for this volume by Claudia Tate, the selected essays provide at of critical approaches to the text. The book also includes a unique range drawing of her childhood surroundings in Stamps, Arkansas, drawn by Angelou herself.