- Order Out of Chaos: The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou, by Dolly A. McPherson
(1990) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
In her autobiographies, Angelou explores “the self in relationship with intimate others: the family, the community, the world.” An “Addendum” to McPherson's book is “A Conversation with Maya Angelou,” in which one of the chief topics is Lillian Hellman's autobiographical writings. The book also includes comment on Mary Mebane, Wright, Anne Moody, Martin Luther King, Jr., Hurston; there are brief references to Douglass, Welty, B. T. Washington, J. W. Johnson, Mary Church Terrell.
- "Maya Angelou: Self and a Song of Freedom in a Southern Tradition," by Carol E. Neubauer
(1990) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
Surveys Angelou's five autobiographies and her volumes of poetry. For Angelou, “the South has become a powerfully evocative metaphor for the history of racial bigotry and social inequality, for brutal inhumanity and final failure. Yet the South also represents a life-affirming force energized by a somewhat spiritual bond to the land.” The autobiographies reveal “her long-term determination to create security and permanency in her life.”
- "Racial Protest, Identity, Words, and Form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," by Pierre A. Walker
(1995) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
This autobiographical work has the organic unity praised by the New Critics, whose theories reached the peak of their appeal when Angelou wrote Caged Bird; Angelou's use of this unity, however, is a “political gesture,” emphasizing “one of the book's central themes: how undeservedly its protagonist was relegated to second-class citizenship in her early years.
- "Breaking Out of the Cage: The Autobiographical Writings of Maya Angelou," by James Robert Saunders
(1991) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
Surveys Angelou's autobiographical works, focusing on real-life events of significance in her development as a writer and person, with emphasis on the importance of “geographical movement” in her life and development. Includes reference to Georgia Douglas Johnson and Alice Walker.
- Conversations with Maya Angelou, by Jeffrey M. Elliot
(1989) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
Reprints interviews dated from 1971 to 1988. The interviews are arranged chronnologically and reprinted as originally published. Elliot points to Angelou's comment that she would “just like to be thought of as someone who tried to be a blessing, rather than a curse to the human race” and explains that in these interviews “this is the writer, the woman, the person revealed.”
- "Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity," by Mary Jane Lupton
(1990) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
In her five autobiographies, Angelou “shifts the emphasis from herself as isolated consciousness [in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, with its tight structure] to herself as Black woman participating in diverse experiences among a diverse class of peoples [in the four other books, with their episodic structure].” The unifying theme of all five books is the mother child relationship.
- "An Interview with Maya Angelou," by Carol E. Neubauer
(1987) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
The focus is on Angelou's autobiographical works, her method of writing.
- "The Song of a Caged Bird: Maya Angelou's Quest After Self-Acceptance," by Sidonie Ann Smith
(1973) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
“Maya Angelou's style testifies to her reaffirmation of self-acceptance, the self-acceptance she achieves within the pattern of the autobiography.”
- "Displacement and Autobiographical Style in Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman," by Carol E. Newbauer
(1983) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
The most recent of Angelou's autobiographical works, focusing on her son's youth, helps to compensate for her years of distance and displacement.
- "Reconstruction of the Composite Self: New Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography," by Sondra O'Neale
(1984) [Maya Angelou] (100%)
“The process of [Angelou's] autobiography is not a singular statement of individual egotism but an exultant explorative revelation that she is because her life is an inextricable part of the misunderstood reality of who Black people and Black women truly are.”
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