The women in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and The Color Purple have been raped and forced to live life harshly as African Americans during the time when civil rights for many people of the United States of America was still very much a dream. The novel, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya An...

Why it's titled I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings depicts the harsh childhood that the author, Maya Angelou, was subject to. The title of the book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, relates to a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled Sympathy. The title simply mean...

Maya Angelou was born on April 4, 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri. She was born under the name Marguerite Johnson, but her brother, Baily, renamed her Maya. Her parents, Baily and Vivian Baxter Johnson, got divorced when she was very young. Maya grew up in a very racist town. There were many problems in...