Caged Bird

“Caged Bird”

• Originally Published: 1983
• Form/Meter: Free verse; 5 stanzas
• Literary Devices: extended metaphor; allusion; repetition; alliteration; assonance; consonance
• Central Concern: “Caged Bird” uses extended metaphor to compare the plight of birds to oppressed people. By contrasting freedom and captivity, Angelou creates a powerful message about the experience of Black Americans.
• Potential Sensitivity Issues:  racism and oppression; enslavement

Maya Angelou, Poet

• Bio: 1928-2014; born in St. Louis; “the Black woman’s poet laureate”; childhood marred by trauma; mute for five years after sexual assault at age seven; writing and activism contributed to Civil Rights Movement, for communism in Cuba, and against Apartheid in South Africa; worked with Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, and James Baldwin; became famous with the publication of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings; read poetry at President Bill Clinton’s inauguration in 1993; later in life was a lecturer, professor, poet, and writer until her death in 2014; honors include a Pulitzer Prize nomination (1971), Tony Award (1973), three Grammys for spoken word albums, National Medal of Arts (2000), Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011), more than fifty honorary degrees, and the first African American woman depicted on a quarter (as part of the US Mint American Women quarters series)
• Other Works: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969); Gather Together in My Name (1974); Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976); The Heart of a Woman (1981); All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986); A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002)
• Awards: BET Honors Award for Literary Arts, 2012; Presidential Medal of Freedom, 2010; NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, 2005, 2007, 2009; Grammy Award for Best Audio Book Narration, 1994, 1996, 2003

THEMES   

• Freedom and Imprisonment
• The Power of Voice
• Complicity