CliffsNotes on Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

CliffsNotes on Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author: Mary Robinson

Publisher: Cliffs Notes

Published: 1992-11-24

Total Pages: 74

ISBN-13: 9780822006411

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The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. Piqued by a dare, Angelou wrote this first book as an exercise in autobiography as art — and succeeded. Her novel is a story of the difficulties of black women and the eventual victory of spirit that comes from being a soulful fighter. CliffsNotes on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helps you explore this tale of rebirth, self-worth, and dignity. This concise supplement helps you understand the overall structure of the novel, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author. Features that help you study include A close look at the author's life which offers insight into her writing A list of characters and their descriptions Summaries and commentaries, chapter by chapter Critical assessments of the novel and the television movie adaptation Glossaries to help you fully understand the novel Critical essays on women in the novel and Southern Fundamentalism A review section that tests your knowledge, and suggested essay topics Classic literature or modern modern-day treasure — you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.


I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2010-07-21

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 030747772X

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Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity.”—James Baldwin From the Paperback edition.


CliffsNotes on Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

CliffsNotes on Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Author: Mary Robinson

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

Published: 1999-03-03

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 0544182138

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The original CliffsNotes study guides offer expert commentary on major themes, plots, characters, literary devices, and historical background. The latest generation of titles in this series also feature glossaries and visual elements that complement the classic, familiar format. Piqued by a dare, Angelou wrote this first book as an exercise in autobiography as art—and succeeded. Her novel is a story of the difficulties of black women and the eventual victory of spirit that comes from being a soulful fighter. CliffsNotes on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helps you explore this tale of rebirth, self-worth, and dignity. This concise supplement helps you understand the overall structure of the novel, actions and motivations of the characters, and the social and cultural perspectives of the author. Features that help you study include A close look at the author's life which offers insight into her writing A list of characters and their descriptions Summaries and commentaries, chapter by chapter Critical assessments of the novel and the television movie adaptation Glossaries to help you fully understand the novel Critical essays on women in the novel and Southern Fundamentalism A review section that tests your knowledge, and suggested essay topics Classic literature or modern-day treasure—you'll understand it all with expert information and insight from CliffsNotes study guides.


Mrs. Flowers

Mrs. Flowers

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher:

Published: 1986-01-01

Total Pages: 32

ISBN-13: 9781556280092

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Through her friendship with Mrs. Flowers, a cultured and gentle Black woman, Marguerite develops self-esteem and an appreciation for great literature.


A Song Flung Up to Heaven

A Song Flung Up to Heaven

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Bantam

Published: 2003-04-01

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 0553897314

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The culmination of a unique achievement in modern American literature: the six volumes of autobiography that began more than thirty years ago with the appearance of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. A Song Flung Up to Heaven opens as Maya Angelou returns from Africa to the United States to work with Malcolm X. But first she has to journey to California to be reunited with her mother and brother. No sooner does she arrive there than she learns that Malcolm X has been assassinated. Devastated, she tries to put her life back together, working on the stage in local theaters and even conducting a door-to-door survey in Watts. Then Watts explodes in violence, a riot she describes firsthand. Subsequently, on a trip to New York, she meets Martin Luther King, Jr., who asks her to become his coordinator in the North, and she visits black churches all over America to help support King’s Poor People’s March. But once again tragedy strikes. King is assassinated, and this time Angelou completely withdraws from the world, unable to deal with this horrible event. Finally, James Baldwin forces her out of isolation and insists that she accompany him to a dinner party—where the idea for writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is born. In fact, A Song Flung Up to Heavenends as Maya Angelou begins to write the first sentences of Caged Bird.


Mom & Me & Mom

Mom & Me & Mom

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2013-04-02

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0679645470

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • A moving memoir about the legendary author’s relationship with her own mother. Emma Watson’s Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick! The story of Maya Angelou’s extraordinary life has been chronicled in her multiple bestselling autobiographies. But now, at last, the legendary author shares the deepest personal story of her life: her relationship with her mother. For the first time, Angelou reveals the triumphs and struggles of being the daughter of Vivian Baxter, an indomitable spirit whose petite size belied her larger-than-life presence—a presence absent during much of Angelou’s early life. When her marriage began to crumble, Vivian famously sent three-year-old Maya and her older brother away from their California home to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. The subsequent feelings of abandonment stayed with Angelou for years, but their reunion, a decade later, began a story that has never before been told. In Mom & Me & Mom, Angelou dramatizes her years reconciling with the mother she preferred to simply call “Lady,” revealing the profound moments that shifted the balance of love and respect between them. Delving into one of her life’s most rich, rewarding, and fraught relationships, Mom & Me & Mom explores the healing and love that evolved between the two women over the course of their lives, the love that fostered Maya Angelou’s rise from immeasurable depths to reach impossible heights. Praise for Mom & Me & Mom “Mom & Me & Mom is delivered with Angelou’s trademark good humor and fierce optimism. If any resentments linger between these lines, if lives are partially revealed without all the bitter details exposed, well, that is part of Angelou’s forgiving design. As an account of reconciliation, this little book is just revealing enough, and pretty irresistible.”—The Washington Post “Moving . . . a remarkable portrait of two courageous souls.”—People “[The] latest, and most potent, of her serial autobiographies . . . [a] tough-minded, tenderhearted addition to Angelou’s spectacular canon.”—Elle “Mesmerizing . . . Angelou has a way with words that can still dazzle us, and with her mother as a subject, Angelou has a near-perfect muse and mystery woman.”—Essence


The Way of All Flesh

The Way of All Flesh

Author: Samuel Butler

Publisher: LA CASE Books

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 712

ISBN-13:

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The Way of All Flesh is one of the time-bombs of literature," said V. S. Pritchett. "One thinks of it lying in Samuel Butler's desk for thirty years, waiting to blow up the Victorian family and with it the whole great pillared and balustraded edifice of the Victorian novel." Written between 1873 and 1884 but not published until 1903, a year after Butler's death, his marvelously uninhibited satire savages Victorian bourgeois values as personified by multiple generations of the Pontifex family. A thinly veiled account of his own upbringing in the bosom of a God-fearing Christian family, Butler's scathingly funny depiction of the self-righteous hypocrisy underlying nineteenth-century domestic life was hailed by George Bernard Shaw as "one of the summits of human achievement."


All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 1991-06-04

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 067973404X

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In 1962 the poet, musician, and performer Maya Angelou claimed another piece of her identity by moving to Ghana, joining a community of "Revolutionist Returnees" inspired by the promise of pan-Africanism. All God's Children Need Walking Shoes is her lyrical and acutely perceptive exploration of what it means to be an African American on the mother continent, where color no longer matters but where American-ness keeps asserting itself in ways both puzzling and heartbreaking. As it builds on the personal narrative of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Gather Together in My Name, this book confirms Maya Angelou’s stature as one of the most gifted autobiographers of our time.


Phenomenal Woman

Phenomenal Woman

Author: Maya Angelou

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-10-05

Total Pages: 38

ISBN-13: 0307807622

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A collection of beloved poems about women from the iconic Maya Angelou These four poems, “Phenomenal Woman,” “Still I Rise,” “Weekend Glory,” and “Our Grandmothers,” are among the most remembered and acclaimed of Maya Angelou's poems. They celebrate women with a majesty that has inspired and touched the hearts of millions. “Phenomenal Woman” is a phenomenal poem that speaks to us of where we are as women at the dawn of a new century. In a clear voice, Maya Angelou vividly reminds us of our towering strength and beauty.


Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Hope Is the Thing with Feathers

Author: Emily Dickinson

Publisher: Gibbs Smith

Published: 2019-02-12

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 1423652835

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Part of a new collection of literary voices from Gibbs Smith, written by, and for, extraordinary women—to encourage, challenge, and inspire. One of American’s most distinctive poets, Emily Dickinson scorned the conventions of her day in her approach to writing, religion, and society. Hope Is the Thing with Feathers is a collection from her vast archive of poetry to inspire the writers, creatives, and leaders of today. Continue your journey in the Women’s Voices series with Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte and The Feminist Papers by Mary Wollstonecraft.