Maya+Angelou+notes

Maya Angelou – 1928 – 2014 1969 – published //I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings// Caged Bird setting: Background:
 * Autobiography – an account of oneself, written by oneself; the story of the life of the author
 * Biography – story of someone else’s life
 * Memoir – an autobiography about a specific period in one’s life; not the whole life
 * Setting – time and place of a story
 * Time: between 1931 and 1946
 * Place: Stamps, Arkansas and Long Beach, California
 * The American South
 * Lots of racial prejudice, all legal
 * Ku Klux Klan
 * Harassed, beat, and killed Jewish people, Catholics, gay people, and black people
 * Maya Angelou –
 * Poet, writer, dancer
 * // Caged Bird // is the first in a series about her life
 * Read a poem at President Clinton’s inauguration
 * // Caged Bird // was published during a time of civil unrest and lots of change
 * When she was 8 years old she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend (not her father)
 * In court she identified her attacker
 * The other men in the family beat him to death
 * She stopped speaking for years after this
 * She saw her voice as too dangerous and powerful