Response to Mya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"
Mya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is a poem featured in her autobiography "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings". Her book reflects the struggle she overcame as a young African American woman in the United States during, and before the civil rights movement. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is about the life of a free "bird" vs. the life of a caged and captured "bird". Despite the captured bird having been captured rather than sing a song of powerlessness and defeat, he sings a song reverberant with hope for freedom. I believe Mya wrote this poem in order to provide hope for oppressed people and to also recognize her own struggles and how she got through them.
The title itself "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" was inspired from "Sympathy" by Paul Laurence Dunbar where in the last sentence of the final stanza he concludes by stating "I know why the caged bird sings." I believe she also titled her poem this......
Join Now or Login to view the rest of this paper.
Approximate Word Count: 518
Approximate Pages: 2 (260 words per double-spaced page) |