PEOPLE’S DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF ALGERIA

Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research

University of Tlemcen

Faculty of Letters and Foreign Languages

Department of English
Section of English

Recovery from Trauma in Maya Angelou’s I Know

Why the Caged Bird Sings
Dissertation Submitted to the Department of English as a Partial
Fulfillment of the Requirement for the Degree of << Master >> in
English Literature and Civilization.

Presented by: Supervised by:

Mis. KHALED Nouria Malika Dr. MOURO Wassila

Mrs. BERBAR Souad

Academic Year 2015/2016

 Dedication
I dedicate this work to my beloved parents, Samir and Karima
Kendouci Tani, who supported me with their pure love and
encouragements and whose prayers of day and night made me fulfill
this work. Thanks for your moral and financial supports, you never
failed me, and I will never be able to thank you enough!
To my uncle Mohammed to whom I wish a soon recovery, and
his wife Karima who encouraged me and supported me with her
wise advice. I thank you for being present when I needed you.

I thank my sisters Radia and Cherifa as well as my brothers

Abdallah and Mohamed Nadjib for their encouragements and
support.
To the memory of my dearest friend Baladi Abd-el-Kader, may
his soul rest in peace, Amen!

I love you all…

I
 Acknowledgements
First and foremost, I thank Allah The Almighty for all the gifts
and the blessings He endowed me with, and for giving me the power
and patience to finish my studies.

I thank my supervisor Dr. Mouro Wassila for her help and

wise advice.

My sincere acknowledgements go to my co-supervisor Mrs.

Berbar Souad, I thank her for her availability and the brilliant ideas
she provided me with. Dear teacher Mrs. Berbar I would like to let
you know that working with you is such an honor to me.

I am indebted to the words and advice of my teachers, in

particular Dr.Bassou Abderrahmane who encouraged me and
believed in me and in my capacities, and whose feedbacks were of
great help; He was such an inspiration to me! Furthermore, I would
like to acknowledge Mr. Kamech Mohammad, Dr. Zidane
Rahmouna and Miss. Mengouchi Meriem who helped me and never
let me down when I needed help. I thank you all from the bottom of
my heart.

At last, I would like to thank even those who did not help me. It
was thanks to them that my huge insistence to do it has increased. “I
am thankful for all of those who said no to me. It’s because of them
I’m doing it myself.” Albert Einstein

II
 Abstract
The aim of this research is to analyze trauma of the main character in Maya
Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings who is Maya herself, and come
up at the end with her recovery. This book was selected because it seems to
hold very important themes which can change many lives. Literature plays its
significant role in this book, and thanks to it Maya could manage her serious
situations and psychological state to shift from her trauma, insecurity and
feeling of shamefulness to self-confidence, race pride and speech recovery.
This research includes two chapters where the first one contains a theoretical
presentation of the African-American society and literature in the 20th century,
as well as the definition of trauma, its types and effects on the person. On the
other hand, the second chapter is devoted to analyze trauma and recovery in
this book. In this case the author’s or the major character’s trauma is analyzed
from a psychological perspective in order to examine her inner state and feeling
as a child who experienced trauma at an early age and how she succeeded to
free herself from these cages and traumas throughout literature and her desire
for the change. The conclusions that are reached from this research are the
importance and power of literature and reading books in Maya’s life, how they
could do miracles in changing her situation from the worse to the better, and
her survival after all what she went through.

III
 Contents
Dedication ……………………………………………………………………..I

Acknowledgments...………………………………………………..................II

Abstract……………………………………………………………………….III

Contents……………………………………………………………………….IV

General Introduction…………………………………………………...........1

Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature and Society

1.1. Introduction……………………………………………………………..5
1.2. African Americans in the 20th Century Society………………………...5

1.2.1 Segregation Laws………………………………………………….6

1.2.2 Education……………………………………………………........7

1.2.3 The Civil Rights Movement……………………………………....9

1.3. African-American Literature in the 20th Century………………...........10

1.3.1 The Harlem Renaissance………………………………………...11

1.3.2 The Role of Women Writers in the Harlem Renaissance

Literature…………….………………………………………………………..13

1.4 Trauma ...………………………………………………………………...19

1.4.1Definition of Trauma………………………………………..........19

1.4.2 Types of Trauma……………………………………………..….21

1.4.3 Effects of Trauma………………………...…………………...…22

1.5 Conclusion………………………………………………………...............24

Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

2.1. Introduction………………………………………………………………26

2.2. Biography………………………………………………………………...26

2.3. Trauma in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings……………………………30

2.3.1 Displacements……………………………………………………31

IV
 2.3.2 Racism and Social Rejection ……………………………………34

2.3.3 Sexual Abuse ………………………………………...................37

2.4. Recovery from Trauma in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing…………....39

2.5. Conclusion………………………………………………………………..47

General Conclusion………………………………………………………….48

Bibliography……………………………………….........................................51

V
General Introduction
 General Introduction

The 20th century period played its role at shaping the American society
into different classes and groups. This segregation created a kind of loss of self-
esteem inside many black Americans. African Americans were living in many
tough situations and circumstances that made their lives a real nightmare and
led to their unstable psychological state.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by the African American Maya
Angelou is a real example that states all the characteristics and aspects of this
period of time. It is Angelou’s real childhood story that states the sequential
tough events that happened to her as a little girl and the psychological
outcomes on her. Little Maya found herself between the love of her
grandmother and the segregated American southern society. Literature and
books were her refuge and true friends beside her brother Bailey.

The reason for writing this research is to explore a very important theme
of trauma that had been subject to many studies and which affected many
generations. Its causes and effects differ from one person to another and even
the degree of the harm as well as the possibility to overcome it or managing to
survive through it.

Following an analytical approach, this work focuses on Maya Angelou’s

autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and seeks to answer the
following research questions:

What are the cages that can capture a young black girl living in the segregated
American South in the 1930’s?

To what extent did Maya Angelou manage to overcome her trauma and gain
her self-confidence?

How was her love for literature very influential and powerful on her life?

The first chapter of this research describes how African Americans

started ejecting what they could not say out loud through their writing, and
literature was their refuge from this psychological and mental prison imposed

2
 General Introduction

by the white people. In addition to that, the first chapter sheds light on the
period of history which witnessed the rise of many African American writers
especially women, creating a new black movement or what is renowned by the
Harlem Renaissance movement in the 1920s. It shows how this movement
helped to create the change in the American society and led the black
Americans gain their position and prove their existence and that they could do
great things. Furthermore, this struggle and urgency for change was followed
by another important movement that also sought for the change and African
Americans’ rights which is the Civil Rights Movement 1950s/1960s. Many
African American writers stood up to draw their reality throughout literary
works, expressing their suffering and humiliation under the segregated white
society. The first chapter closes up with an overview about trauma, its types
and its effects on the human lives.

The second chapter of this research is basically about the Recovery of

Angelou from her terrible trauma. It provides us with a discussion of the
trauma experience of one of the most influential author Maya Angelou whose
childhood was literally a disaster because of a traumatic sexual abuse, racism
and displacements, which were very tough for her to bear. It closes up with her
recovery and release.

3
 Chapter One

Trauma in African-American Literature

and Society
Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
1.1 Introduction
The African Americans suffered from many issues that traumatized
their society and lives. Racial discrimination and being under the white
domination forced them to search solutions to these problems, and to improve
themselves as American first class citizens. They took the defiance through
non-violence to demonstrate that they have capacities and competences, and to
prove that the color of the skin does not mean to be superior or inferior. The
blacks started with the Harlem Renaissance in 1920s, then the Civil Rights
Movement that began in 1950s where Black Americans especially writers
began to use their pieces of writing and literary works for civil rights to obtain
equality.

This chapter aims at giving a comprehension of the link between African

American literature and the situation of black Americans in the 20th century
society. It indicates the circumstances in which African Americans were living
in the 20th century society, and sheds light on their suffering from racism and
segregation. As a reaction to this miserable situation and way of life, African
Americans awoke and protested against the segregation laws announcing the
beginning of a new era which is the Harlem Renaissance. The latter paved the
way for the Civil Rights Movements. This chapter also addresses an important
subject that had a big impact on most black Americans at that period of time, if
not all of them, which is trauma. It offers a definition of trauma, its types, as
well as its effects on the person and how one can overcome it through time.

1.2 African Americans in the 20th Century Society

Going back to the 20th century, the African American society was living
a difficult period of time. The period between the 1930‟s and 1940‟s was
marked by many beliefs and events which dominated the black society. The
latter was under the depression, prohibition, civil rights movements, and racial

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
discrimination. Racism has been one of the major issues in the United States
since the period of colonization and slavery.

1.2.1 Segregation Laws

In the mid-twentieth century, even though the formal racial

discrimination was broadly banned, and it was socially not acceptable and/or
morally odious, so far, racial politics continued to be a major phenomenon.
Historical racism remains reflected in socio-economic inequality, and it has
taken on more modern, indirect forms of expression, the most prevailing being
symbolic racism. Thus, racial stratification remains in employment, housing,
education, lending, and government (Jordan 459). Symbolic racism can be
explained as a combination of anti-Black affect, or hatred toward Blacks, and
some U.S. traditional values like self-reliance, individualism, and the Protestant
work ethic. Symbolic racism was applied to explore the attitudes and behaviors
of the White Americans across a range of political issues and public policy
debates (Sidanius and Pratto 16).

Professional opportunities were not easy to get for the African

Americans. Most of them lived in bad conditions, poverty, and diseases. They
were rejected by the white people and treated as animals and even worse. Many
black men were hanged for simply looking into the eyes of a white woman or
flirting with her, and many black women were raped by the privileged white
men. The Murder of Emmett Till on August 24, 1955, was one of the most
terrible crimes committed by the white Americans and which symbolized the
injustice and the extreme racial cruelty of the South. He was a 14 years old
Black American boy who whistled at a white woman in Mississippi, and days
later he was lynched. This brutal and terrifying crime was a big tragedy that
affected the American society (Bynum 80).

The civil rights bill was not passed until the end of the 1960s. Prior to
that there were Jim Crow laws of segregation, blacks could not eat, sleep, or
mix in any way with white people. The black Americans lived in very bad

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
racial discrimination under the Jim Crow laws which prohibited any mixture
between whites and blacks and kept them separated in all fields and all aspects.
Thus, it made Black-Americans more inferior to white and less valued.
Racism was a big part of the southern lifestyle during the 1930‟s. The
segregation prevailed in buses, schools and even in parks. The Jim Crow Laws,
which were present in the 1930's, did not allow African Americans in places
such as parks, restaurants, hospitals, schools. In addition to that they could not
even walk on the same sidewalk as a white person, or drink from the same
fountain:
The imposition of the “Jim Crow” system of legal segregation
throughout the South stifled black political progress.
Nevertheless, African-American leaders continued to build the
intellectual and institutional capital that would nourish the
successful civil rights movements of the mid to late 20th century
(Friedman 8).
Art and politics during the period of the 1960s-1970s played an
important role in African Americans‟ resistance to Jim Crow segregation and
racial oppression in the American society. African Americans started
perceiving themselves differently and had more confidence in themselves as
American citizens and not less than white ones, and it was marked as a shift
that happened in their lives.
Another important element that showed the suffering of black
Americans from racial discrimination was education.

1.2.1. Education
There has always been a racial and ethnic bias in the division of wealth,
in America. The richness of school area was overwhelmingly specified by the
racial composition of its inhabitants, in which the richer areas were inhabited
largely by white non-Hispanic residents. However, African Americans and
Hispanics generally inhabited the poorer areas. In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896),
blacks were separated from whites at school and the system was officially

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
permitted by the Supreme Court of the United States, until the early 1950s.
Thus, this segregation led black Americans to an inferior level of education. As
an example, in the 1940‟s, public spending per pupil in southern black schools
was only 45 percent of what was spent on white pupils. The black schools had
overcrowded and stumbling down facilities, staffed by less competent teachers
with insufficient salaries, and students walk miles/long distances to and from
school (Maume 99).
The majority of African American ancestors came as slaves to North
America which was a reason to exclude them from various forms of traditional
schooling, even if they cultivated their own rich forms of informal education.
After obtaining freedom, following the Civil War, African Americans
registered in schools on massive scale for the first time in history. These
opportunities helped in the expansion of educated elite that could elucidate
effective challenges to racism and discrimination in the 20th century, even
though their schools were inferior to Whites. Eventually, African Americans
made education a defining issue in their struggle for civil rights, with the
historic Brown case in 1954 standing as a turning point in the movement for
equality. It was uncertain to achieve these changes in such a rapid duration,
without the development of education as a fount for the Black community, and
an object of struggle as well (Rury 19).

In brief, in the United States the issue of segregation was of the utmost
importance since it was linked pretty much to poverty. The latter was important
because it disclaimed the equality of life opportunities between individuals.
The shortage of equal opportunities, in turn, weakened the establishments of
liberalism and democracy. The courts have got an important role as they dealt
with the issues that concerned race, poverty, freedom and equality, since the
early 1950s. Relying on the ideological mood of the American nation and the
composition of the Supreme Court, the decisions of the Court have favored
either race and equality, or freedom of choice. The decisions of the Court

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and Society
favored desegregation, the right of the previously oppressed racial groups, and
the decrease of inequality for poor schoolchildren, for almost 20 years since
1954 (Maume 99).
Nevertheless, educational access and African American progress knew a
remarkable development in the 20th century America. The movement that
aimed to disseminate the equal opportunity started at the landmark decision of
Brown vs. the Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas (1954) and reached a
climax through the Civil Rights Movement (1955–68). It was proclaimed in the
1954 Supreme Court decision (Brown v. Board of Education) that racial
segregation was unconstitutional in education. After many years, exactly in the
1962, the first African American student to register at the University of
Mississippi was James Meredith (IHEP Editor no page).
Blacks‟ education played an important role in the advancements of the
Civil Rights movement, especially the Brown v. Board of Education (1954)
decision which struck down the legality of the Jim Crow „separate but equal‟
laws.
1.2.3. The Civil Rights Movement
America was a white supremacist privileged society, that was built on
illusion of „superiority against inferiority‟ designated by color of skin. The
movement for change, from the 1950s-1960s was called the civil rights era,
where black people and many other people of all colors stood up and protested
for change, and many were killed. In this period of time African Americans
strove to obtain equality and rights.

The Civil Rights Movement‟s definitive aim was integration and

consolidation into mainstream United States. But what it actually obtained in its
peak was not integrity but rather desegregation, where it represented African
Americans in what was segregated before such as neighborhood, schools, and
work place. Black Americans classification as second class citizens was kept as
the norm for most of them. Therefore, as the white Americans refused
integration, blacks started seeking for the control of community as a way for

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
freedom, in which they could take control of the segregated schools and
institutions (Ezra 101).

Malcolm X was the prominent personage who came to epitomize the

Black Nationalist period of the Civil Rights movement. He was such a
privileged figure who ordered a respect and inspired a love at a point that
cannot be equaled with anyone else in the nationalist movement. In the whole
black history that took place in such awe and admiration, the only exception of
a figure that is comparable to Malcolm X was Martin Luther King, his
synchronous and former ideological rival. The two men were leaders, symbols,
eloquent orators, and martyrs for their cause who stood astride the mid-20th
century like giants heroes (Ezra 104).

The civil rights movement was the turning point for African Americans
in the 20th century. African Americans gained many achievements in the
American society at that time, but to this day racial equality has not been
completely achieved.

The change could not have been achieved without the great efforts of the
numerous African-American writers of the Harlem Renaissance who struggled
to make their dream of getting their human rights as American citizens come
true. The Harlem Renaissance literature paved the way to the Civil Rights
Movement of the 1950s-1960s.

1.3 African-American Literature in the 20th Century

African American literature is the body of literature written by
Americans of African descent. It has been raised as a dream and desire to
challenge the discrimination and white culture that controlled and dominated
society for a long time.
Poetry was the first genre that African Americans produced. It remains
as the most known means of expression for blacks. There are many poets who
started publishing their works in the 1960s, among them Mari Evans, Amiri

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Haki Madhubuti, and Nikki Giovanni, in
addition to poets who were first published in the 1970s, such as Maya Angelou,
Lucille Clifton, and Yusef Komunyakaa, who continued to publish in the
1990s and beyond. Another group of poets who started publishing in the 1980s
joined them such as Rita Dove and Cornelius Eady as well as poets who started
publishing in the 1990s, including Kevin Powell, Elizabeth Alexander, and
Kevin Young (Gale no page).

Through time African-American literature flourished and knew a

variation of subjects and sensitive themes, where black writers started to dare
addressing their ideas and thoughts, and expressing themselves, their sufferings
and their dreams for equal rights out loud. The period of time that is known as
the Harlem Renaissance or the New Negro Movement had a big impact on
African-Americans lives and changed their situations to the better.

1.3.1The Harlem Renaissance

Before the blossoming of the Harlem Renaissance, many African

Americans had moved from the rural South to big industrial cities of the north
like New York. The economic opportunities of this period of time led to a
widespread migration, since these cities offered to them new opportunities for
intellectual and social freedom. Thus, this great migration had paved the way to
the Harlem Renaissance, when jazz, urban blues and a new pride in one‟s race
were flourishing. Literature was affected by the new spirit of the age and a
huge body of literary works was shaped.

The date of the Harlem Renaissance was debated pointedly by literary

and cultural historians. It is noticed by Huggins that periodization is constantly
a fiction of sorts and that the period of the beginning or ending of the
movement can never be absolutely specified (Quoted by Wall 10). Huggins
indicates that the dates of the Harlem Renaissance are between World War I

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and Society
and the Great Depression, whereas, some of the scholars stratify this phrase
precisely to the twentieth century (Quoted by Wall 10). However, Arthur P.
Davis and Michael Peplow rejected the Harlem label and date the New Negro
Renaissance from 1910, the year in which the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People and its journal The Crisis was founded, to
1940, the year that saw the publication of Richard Wright‟s Native Son and
preparation for the World War II (Quoted by Wall 10). Like David Lewis,
Bruce Kellner signs that the rise and fall of the Harlem Renaissance in terms of
political events: the silent protest march through Harlem 1917 and the Harlem
riot of 1935 (10).

During the rise of the civil rights movement which has been made up of
many movements, black American literature was in between a second
renaissance, subsequent to the Harlem Renaissance era, or what is called the
New Negro Movement or the New Negro Renaissance. The Harlem
Renaissance was a flourished and most influential movement in the 1920‟s
literature, culture and arts of African Americans. It was one of the most
prosperous and most complex artistic eras in American history in which there
was an unprecedented explosion of literature and other different artistic forms
created and inspired by African Americans. Many artists, writers, intellectuals
and activists; men and women migrated to Harlem from all over America in the
first decades of the twentieth century. Black women also migrated to big cities,
and although they were full of hope for a better future and a better life, the
substance stayed the same. The Harlem Renaissance was a sweeping
intellectual and social movement that affected the whole American culture
(„“Harlem Renaissance” 1).

The African Americans carried on with their strife to prove the validity
of their art in the eyes of white America by the 20th century progression. In the
African American literary circles, many persistent debates were organized
concerning the role of the black artist. The Negro Artist and Racial Mountain

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
(1926) is Longston Hughes‟s original essay that deals with the issue of black
artist seeking inside the black race for his work‟s inspiration. As a result,
numerous African American writers included folk and African American folk
in their writing. In addition to that, more awareness prevailed among African
American writers of this era about catering to a black audience, as it is
mentioned in Alain Locke‟s Negro Youth Speaks (1925). In order to promote
the black race emotionally, psychologically, spiritually and socially, race pride
was very important as well as accurate and favorable representations of folk
were of great essential to create a Black Aesthetic. The folk were placed as the
principal characters in Writers‟ books by Claude McKay, Zora Neale Hurston,
and Sterling Brown. While McKay‟s Home to Harlem centered on the role of
the folk in the North for instance, there was Hurston‟s Their Eyes Were
Watching God and Brown‟s Southern Road which concentrated on the folk of
the south, and specifically Brown‟s Southern Road (1932), which is a
collection of poetry that calls for African Americans to return to their southern
origins (Williams 37-8).

Undoubtedly, many African-American women played a crucial role in

the Harlem Renaissance literature. Their literary works which hold different
themes and their considerable achievements were of great importance and very
influential for Black Americans in particular and for the American society in
general.

1.3.2 The Role of Women Writers in the Harlem Renaissance

Literature
Many women artists, writers, and hostesses, in Harlem and in other
cities helped to define the Renaissance and played major roles in creating,
supporting, and enhancing the African American arts and letters. Georgia
Douglas Johnson, Zora Neale Hurston, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Nella Larsen,
and others‟ efforts and exertions played very important and influential roles in

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and Society
the Harlem Renaissance (“Harlem Renaissance” 1). Their achievements reflect
the struggle of a generation of literary women to portray the lives of Black
people and how bad they wanted the change and fought for it.
The works and lives of the African American women playwrights of the
Harlem Renaissance reflect the heritage of the black female‟s self dependency
and common help. Their special support to the tradition can be observed in the
self-defined images of black women that these playwrights constructed and in
their response and help in shaping the artistic community in which they
worked. It was obvious for black women writers of the 1920s and 1930s that it
was almost impossible to get job opportunities in the professional American
theatre. Thus many were teachers, a few of them were government workers,
and others worked different jobs to support themselves (Murphy 101). These
women wrote for love and challenge of writing and for their communities.
Their dramas were firstly published in black-owned journals like The Crisis
and Opportunity, and produced as well in black-owned operated community
theatres, churches, schools, social club halls, and homes. Their plays were
produced at black amateur theatres like the Harlem Experimental Theatre and
the Krigwa players (Harlem, Baltimore, and Washington DC), as well as at
several Negro Units of Federal Theatre Project (Murphy 101). These female
writers were regarded as theatre pioneers due to their period of writing which
was an era where the black artists were excited to explore their talents and
create their own images through their artistic works as playwrights, directors
…etc. They came with a flourished black art that holds a feminine point of
view, which made their role unique (101).
Georgia Douglas Johnson (1877?-1966) was one of the earliest African
American women playwrights and one of the most prolific writers of her
epoch, with twenty-eight plays (Stephens 1). She helped and gave a share from
her home in Washington, D.C to the artistic productivity of the Harlem
Renaissance, and also to the early twentieth century African American drama
and corresponding national black theatre movement. Even though she was a

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
multitalented woman artist with her writing of poems, music, plays and short
stories, she was known and criticized most for her poetry and her renown as “a
lady poet” of the Harlem Renaissance (Stephens 1). In theatre history, Johnson
was the principal figure with her plays that were the landmark contributions not
only for the African American theatre but also for the American theatre in
general. She was a pioneer in the national movement “the New Negro theatre
of the 1920s and 1930s”, and she is the most productive playwright in the
American “lynching-drama” tradition (Stephens 2).
Johnson was a leader and an active participant in the majority of groups
and organizations that are concerned with women and minorities (Murphy
104). She used her playwriting skills to interfere against lynching, which was a
cruel form of racial violence against black Americans (primarily black men) by
white mobs. Johnson was the most productive of all playwrights who wrote
dramas protesting the crime of lynching and above all she was an active
contributor in the anti-lynching movement in the 1920s (105). Her role was the
most important because she performed it outside of Harlem. Thus, she gave a
motive force for the intercity connections which made the movement genuinely
a national one. Johnson left her own heritage to the theatre of the Harlem
Renaissance as well as to black women‟s self-help support tradition, as a
determined playwright who combined dramatic art with the brutal subjects of
lynching, concentrating on female characters while helping the development of
many forms of black drama, and enhancing the vital network for the artistic
community (106)
Zora Neal Hurston (1891-1960) was a folklorist, ethnographer,
novelist, short story writer, story teller, galvanizing personality, and
emblematic figure of the ceremonial of black culture by the Harlem
Renaissance. She wrote about it and the long journey of the twentieth century
to pursue beauty, individuality, and substantiation (Sturgeon no page).
Hurston was an exceptional woman writer who felt free to display
outspoken black heroines, unlike the majority of female Renaissance writers

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
who feared the stereotypes. Janie Crawford was the major character of Their
Eyes Were Watching God (1937), who looked for sexual satisfaction with men
across class and age boundaries. Another example in Prove It on Me Blues
(1928), where Ma Rainey asserted that she must hang out with women as
friends rather than men, simply because she did not like men, which was a bold
statement that the women writers of the Renaissance did not dare to write
(Hutchinson 143). As many single black women migrated to the north, the
black bourgeoisie did their best to control Women‟s sexual image. Black
women were supposed to hold their positions as responsible mothers of the race
and that the black American future depended on them. Therefore, lesbians were
considered as a catastrophe since they weakened the objective of racial
advancement and because of their rejection of their reproductive role, they
created a risk for the future of black Americans, and were also blamed for
black youth corruption. Hence, with this sensitive reaction concerning black
female sexual image, it is not a surprise that transgressive sexuality in
particular played a minor role in literary works of the Renaissance female
writers (143).
Jessie Fauset (1882-1961) was an editor and author. „Behind every
famous man is a woman‟ is a saying that can be applied on men of Harlem.
Jessie Redmon Fauset was a woman behind scenes who enhanced the careers
of some renowned men of the Harlem Renaissance (Wintz and Paul 1014).
Fauset became a French and Latin teacher in Washington, Dc, in October 1906
despite of all the discrimination she faced (McKissack 15). After the death of
her father and mentor, she started writing to W.E.B DuBois. The latter admired
and published her articles in the magazine of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) which is called The Crisis, its role
aimed for the equal treatment of African-Americans. Fauset is considered as
the most significant contributor to black literary history with her role of literary
editor and the NAACP‟s Crisis magazine as well as a mentor to younger male
writers such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and her works were

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Chapter One: Trauma in African-American Literature
and Society
perceived in the Harlem Renaissance canon as „minor‟ texts (Ogbar 93). Fauset
moved to Harlem after her employment by DuBois as the literary editor of the
magazine, in the 1919 (McKissack 16). DuBois, One year later, she became an
editor again for a monthly publication for children entitled The Brownies’
Book. Thanks to this work which she held until 1926, she obtained an
international stage to promote her ideas about both race and the importance of
literature for black Americans to overcome their oppression (McKissack 17).
Fauset continued her active roles giving lectures and hosting cultural
events which supported the progress of black writers until she passed away in
April 1961. She realized that not only men were able to shape the Harlem
Renaissance but also women were capable too; the thing that made her unique
(18). The significant accomplishments of Fauset did not stop only on her
having hosted social meeting and encouraged fledgling writers but also she had
a willingness to teach black children how to be proud of their heritage and
support their creativity (Andrews 138). In addition to that, Fauset wrote poetry,
many essays, and short fiction and wrote four novels that were published over a
nine-year span: There is Confusion (1924), Plum Bun (1929), The Chinaberry
Tree (1931), and The Comedy: American Style (1933) which made her the most
prolific novelist during that period (138). Fauset helped give birth to the
Renaissance, and was more than a midwife to many writers‟ careers
(McKissack 18). She led the emergence of several key ideas as well as the
careers of writers, including Langston Huges and Nella Larsen of The Crisis
(NAACP). Her novels including There is Confusion which was considered the
first Harlem novel are classified with the work of Nella Larsen and Zora Neale
Hurston, as claimed in The Encyclopedia of Harlem Renaissance (Sturgeon no
page).
Nella Larsen (1891-1964) What made Nella Larsen one of the
Renaissance leading lights was her desire of taking creative and intellectual
challenges. Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929) are her two novels which
depict the struggle of Talented Tenth light-skinned black women to stabilize

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and Society
their fidelity for their race, in addition to a desire for sexual fulfillment (Parini
152). Nella Larsen did not deal with race issues in the common sense, nor did
she glorify blackness, as she did not utilize the race to expostulate or create
propaganda. Hence, as Mr. Robert Bone stated, she was a rearguard of the
Harlem Renaissance (Quoted by Wintz 287). Larsen had the ability to display
her subject with a vast perspective where a personal issue can be developed to a
race issue, and then to a global one, which is what made her a very
sophisticated writer. She was the first writer among the black ones to fulfill this
artistic achievement (Wintz 287).
The role of Larsen, at the beginning was mainly informing people of the
evening assembling about executive committee. To announce the display or to
encourage the spreading of the word, Larsen sent cards during summer.
Besides that, she assisted to establish a group of hostesses to welcome and
guide people during the display (Hutchinson 137). Furthermore, she did her
best to support the promotion of the event, in mid-July, by sending letters
written by Williams to preachers and pastors demanding support for the event,
in soliciting hostesses from their congregation, and in encouraging parishioners
to exhibit their work. In addition to her contacts with ministers of church
assembly as well as the Seventh-Day Adventists to attract more attention, while
more recognized, churchgoing female contacted the more reputable
congregation to which they belonged (137).
Different creative works in literature in the 1920s and 1930s were
explored in New York City‟s community of Harlem. At the time when the
culture and literature were flourished, many talented black women worked hard
and created successful careers as writers, artists …etc. Their typical roles in
the Harlem Renaissance literature were of great importance in which they
helped in shaping thoughts and changing lives. These black women‟s legacy
and imprint that demonstrate their resistance against all the obstacles and the
terrible discrimination they faced seeking for freedom and a better life will
always be remarkable and inspiring to many generations all over the world.

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Women writers of this period were more likely obliged to stay home with the
family by means of social mores and traditions, or economic dependence. Thus
they were often unable to find their way to Harlem, but despite that they were
very important in constructing centers of the Harlem Renaissance Movement
outside of Harlem and New York City.
Many black Americans suffered from trauma in a society that tended to
praise the whites and many of these blacks were shocked by the crimes that
were committed against them by white Americans for banal reasons and when
their only mistake was their black color.
1.4 Trauma
Trauma theorists and witness narratives have often emphasized the
corrosive nature of trauma on the experiencing subject, the culpability and self-
doubt that dominate survivors of traumatic events, the agonistic consciousness
that attend their efforts to recall their experiences, specifically in narrative
form. Some writers such as Primo Levi, Raymond Federman, Toni Morrison,
and Elie Wiesel have emphasized on both necessity and impossibility of
representing in writing the deeply alienating experience of traumatic events
(Quoted by Cornis-Pope and Neubauer 461). Several trauma writers have
resorted to strategies that postponed and detour the narrative, fearing that if the
narrative settles too soon in an identifiable plot, it will replace truth with
cultural stereotypes and narrative agreement (Cornis-Pope and Neubauer 461).

1.4.1 Definition of Trauma

Trauma is a psychological, physical and mental damage which leaves on
the person a deep and sometimes a permanent effect. It can be defined as:

Contemporary theories seem to agree on a definition of trauma in

terms of overwhelming life experiences that shatter the social and
psychological sense of self and precipitate existential crisis,
characterized by „flashbacks, nightmares and other re-
experiences, emotional numbing, depression, guilt, autonomic

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and Society
arousal, explosive violence or a tendency to hypervigilance‟
(Linett 160).

This means that the term trauma usually signifies a psychological state
of the person who suffers from past bad experiences for example; Family
problems, poverty, accidents, war, rape…etc. It causes a change in the behavior
of the person due to an extreme anxiety, sorrow, or shock after a negative event
or a distress. Linett adds:

The Greek word trauma literally refers to a physical wound and,

until the last century, alluded strictly to bodily injury. As Jill
Matus reminds us, both trauma and its iteration as combat fatigue
syndrome, described in the twentieth century as post-traumatic
stress disorder or PTSD, are historically produced categories
whose foundations pre-date Freudian psychoanalysis in
hypotheses formulated by nineteenth century writers. (160).

Trauma occurs when the person is exposed to a shocking experience that

affects his psychological, mental and spiritual state. The child‟s trauma that
occurs as a result of a sexual abuse is a very delicate one. A traumatized
person‟s behaviors start changing; he starts doing something new that is
unusual; start getting flashbacks of what happened to him/her, and having
difficulty in sleeping having nightmares.

Furthermore, it may be considered that trauma is a kind of grievous or

overwhelming event that happens to a person, as it may be seen as a process
where the mind of an individual is set up in a particular way in order to deal
with this event. That process consists of traumatic induction, the pre-traumatic
phase, and the acute phase of the traumatic state itself. It is followed by a post-
traumatic period of either recovery or decline (Arnold and Ralph 7).

The twentieth century writers focused on plots of childhood trauma from

sexual abuse especially by closest people like the father…etc: “Still, the more
readily detectable central trauma of the twentieth-century plot is of the
common childhood variety, and resides in the --- apparently sexual---abuse the

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and Society
twentieth-century narrator was subjected to by father” (Ganteau and Onega
235).

Trauma differs from one person to another, from a case to another and
from a circumstance to another as well. Thus, it has different types which vary
depending on the situation or the event that causes the trauma.

1.4.2 Types of Trauma

The unexpected shattering of the person‟s internal world is the core of

trauma. The prolonged effect of this inner disintegration is affected by many
causes involving whether the trauma is random or malicious and if it is resulted
from a natural catastrophe, accident or individual intent; the person‟s stage of
development and who is experiencing the trauma, in addition to that, the
quality of the relationship; whether the trauma is caused by someone else and if
it happens only once or more. It is affected by one‟s unique personality features
and past conflicts (Arnold and Ralph 5).

There are two different types of trauma; acute or type I trauma and
complex or type II trauma. Type I trauma can be defined as a single shattering
event that has an impact on the person, for example; an airplane crash, and
physical or sexual abuse. Type II trauma usually occurs in the cases of repeated
victimization or abuse when the overwhelming experiences are at the same
time chronic and unpredictable. Complex trauma has its outcomes which have
a developing pervasion, and perpetrated interpersonally are the most harmful
kinds of complex trauma (6).

After World War II, there was another interesting research that treated
once more the psychological state of the persons who survived a natural
catastrophe like tornadoes, earthquake and mudslides, or industrial ones like
nuclear accident and explosions. The period after the war is over, knew a huge
interest in these types of trauma, and the research investment given by the
National Academy of Science, can be demonstrated as well by the idea that the

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and Society
information corresponding to the results of disasters would be able to expect
the psychiatric outcomes of events which happened during war time (as an
example during nuclear explosions) (Vees-Gulani 17). Another branch of
trauma literature began to have a look at the impacts of rape on women, which
led to what is called “rape trauma syndrome” in 1974. Once more, the
symptoms shown by the victims of sexual assault, such as nightmares and
flashbacks that have a connection to the rape, avoidance behavior, panic, and
rage (17).

1.4.3 Effects of Trauma

The outcome of traumatic events on human functioning has been a
subject of study for many years. Plenty of research has studied traumatic events
starting from individual events such as car crashes and sexual violations to
community-wide events such as natural disasters, airplane crashes, and society
violence, in addition global events such as war (Butler, Alisson and Lewis 35).
The individual generally considers traumatic events as life-threatening,
unpredicted, and rare, and with high severity as well. However, in a given
society, traumatic events can be repeated, thus, the existence of fear can turn
into the norm. Evidence indicates that the type and intensity of effects often
differ according to the kind of event (35).

The effect of exposure to a traumatic event is liable to change and

specific to the person; both psychological and physiological response can
vastly differ. Social environment, biological and genetic structure, past
experiences, and future expectations will interact with characteristics of the
traumatic experience to result the individual‟s psychological response. In
general, the individuals who are exposed to a traumatic event show increased
rates of intense stress disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and substance
use disorder. Even though psychiatric illnesses such as PTSD (Post-Traumatic
Stress Disorder) are the most acute effects of traumatic events, they are the best
examined as well (35). PTSD is characterized by chronic and debilitating

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and Society
difficulties in many areas of emotional and interpersonal functioning,
exemplifying the overall complexity of the PTSD diagnosis (Johnson 15).

A large part of the research literature has emphasized particularly on

events. However, PTSD is only one effect in a countless consequences caused
by traumatic events. Experiencing a traumatic event does not necessarily cause
serious psychological problems. There are series of outcomes resulting from
distress responses such as mild anxiety, to behavioral changes such as mild
difficulty sleeping, to the beginning of a diagnosable psychiatric illness. The
severity of these outcomes can be put into three categories that may correspond
to strategies for intervention: Most people can experience mild distress and/or
behavioral change, such as the inability to sleep, feeling irritated and worried,
as well as the increased smoking or alcohol use (Butler, Alisson and Lewis 35).

These individuals will probably recover without any treatment, but may
benefit from education and society-wide encouraging interventions. A smaller
group may have more moderate symptoms such as continued insomnia and
anxiety and will probably benefit from psychological and medical supportive
interventions. A small subgroup will require specialized therapy (37).

Traumas which stick on active memory leave both children and adult
imprisoned in the past, and make them sink in the trauma somatic sensation and
in terrible feelings of anxiety and severe anger which distort their present
perception. Until these sensations are overcome, the traumatic events continue
to appear as symptoms in forms that are ambiguous and not understood neither
by the traumatized person nor by his close ones (Arnold and Ralph 129).

Furthermore, children who survive after a sexual trauma always hold in

their memories a sorrowful feeling and flashbacks of what happened to them.
This terrible incident of rape will remain as big loss of their childhood
innocence and can even lead them to lose trust in others:

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and Society
Survivors of childhood sexual trauma, Herman explains, „face the
task of grieving not only for what was lost but also for what was
never theirs to lose. The childhood that was stolen from them is
irreplaceable. They must mourn the loss of the foundation of
basic trust (quoted by Bloom 112).

Experiencing trauma does not signify that the person‟s life is destroyed
forever; instead, one can get something positive out of it. This does not mean to
make the experience less serious. Trauma is defined as terrible, complex, and
distressing. However, by not giving reasonable grounds about the offensiveness
of any type of trauma, it can be discussed how to get a positive outcome from
it, which is a kind of alchemical transmutation of past trauma into present
freedom, compassion, and wisdom (Volkman 265).

1.5 Conclusion

During the 20th century, African Americans in particular those who were
living in the south, were literally suffering from a segregated society. Most of
them were traumatized and psychologically very sick. African Americans at
that period were unfairly treated, tortured, and murdered without any pity.
Nevertheless, these people did not give up their dream of being free, and
struggled challenging all the suffering and the ache of discrimination that
traumatized most of them, to impose their existence and to have the position
that they deserve. Many of them gave birth to the Harlem Renaissance by using
literature as a means of dealing with their trauma, as Maya Angelou attempted
in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

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 Chapter Two

When Literature Becomes a Recovery

Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

2.1 Introduction

African American literature is the fruit of black Americans‟ hard work

and struggles to prove their position in the American society among the white
Americans. The 20th century knew the occurrence of many African American
writers whose literature helped at shaping thoughts and whose roles in the
society reflected their determination to get their rights and strive for freedom.
Maya Angelou was one of the most powerful black women who challenged
themselves and challenged both the white and the black society that oppressed
them and made them feel inferior and ashamed of their black color even though
it was not their fault. Her first autobiographical book I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings portrays her childhood incidents that hold many traumatic
experiences among them her rape which led to her muteness.

The main purpose of this chapter is to discuss trauma in Angelou‟s I

Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that overshadowed her childhood, and her
struggles to cope with hard situations. It concentrates on the psychological state
of Maya Angelou as going through her terrible trauma and how literature,
studies and graduation played an important role at giving a glimmer of hope to
Maya the little black girl who suffered a terrible childhood trauma in a
segregated American society.

2.2 Biography

Maya Angelou was a poet, dancer, singer, actress, producer, director,

and scriptwriter. She is renowned for her six autobiographies, I Know Why the
Caged Bird Sings (1969), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986),
Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry
Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), and A Song Flung Up to
Heaven (2002) (Akyampong and Gates231). These autobiographies hold the
themes of resisting against racism, identity, sexuality, self-esteem, family and
travel. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first autobiography that she

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wrote and her most notable one that millions of copies were sold and made her
known throughout different countries of the world (poeticous 2016).

Maya was born in St Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. Marguerite

Johnson was her real name, but her brother Bailey called her “My sister”. He
gave her the nickname 'My' and then 'Maya', which is her current name (Jones
6).

After her parents‟ divorce and at the age of three, she was sent with her
brother Bailey to live with their parental grandmother „Momma‟. The later
owned a general store in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas, where Maya,
Bailey and Uncle Willie who lived with Momma too, helped her managing it.
(Robinson 11)

Maya was very close to Bailey and trusted him a lot, to tell him all her
secrets. Even though she was well treated by both Momma and Uncle Willie,
she always felt the absence of her parents, especially in the annual occasions
where all the families used to gather. Bailey was the person to whom she
confessed her pain; they cried together and had fun together as well. (Angelou
57)

At the age of seven, Maya Angelou was sexually abused by Mr.

Freeman who was her mother‟s lover. After her family knew about the rape,
Mr. Freeman was found killed. Maya then, was shocked and blamed herself
about what happened and thought that her words were so powerful that they
would kill. Consequently, she stopped talking for nearly five years
(Cunningham 130)

When she went back with her brother to live with their grandmother
again, in the south, she was lucky to know Mrs. Flowers; a very educated
woman. The lady had a look on Maya and sowed the seeds of love for literature
and reading inside that infant‟s feeble, injured, sorrowed heart and lost mind.
This helped her get out of her cocoon and regained her voice so long jailed
deep inside her body. (Angelou 104)

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Maya Angelou read many books in her childhood with much passion for
the African American poets such as Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston Hughes,
and James Weldon Johnson. These poets inspired her at a point that there was a
strong link between her poetry and theirs. The title of her autobiography I
Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was taken from the poem “Sympathy” of Paul
Lawrence Dunbar who influenced and inspired Maya Angelou:

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,

When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart‟s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings
I know why the caged bird sings! (Bloom 1-2)
Literature played a big part in Angelou‟s life; she studied a wide range
of books that inspired her to write her own ones. Upon Maya‟s Graduation at
the top of her class from the Lafayette Training School, in 1940, she was sent
and her brother Bailey again to live with their mother in San Francisco. As
Maya advanced in her studies and she was granted a scholarship to study drama
and music at California Labor School. Hence, Angelou started to participate in
the art forms which she soon used to launch her first professional career
(Hawthorne no page).

After her pregnancy at the age of sixteen with her young neighbor, she
felt alone because he quitted her in the fourth month. Bailey advised her not to
tell their parents until her graduation (Braxton 70).

At the age of seventeen, Angelou became the first black woman

conductor in San Francisco. After she received her high school diploma and
she gave birth to a son, Guy Bailey Johnson. (“Maya Angelou” The Poetry
Foundation no page)

She started a career as a professional entertainer as a singer-dancer, in the

1950‟s at the Purple Onion a cabaret in California. ("Maya Angelou -
Biography" no page)

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In 1952, Angelou married a white ex sailor, whose name was Tosh

Angelos. Their marriage failed because of Angelou‟s fear that her son‟s pride
in his black ancestry might be compromised with a white stepfather. Her
husband‟s atheism was also one of the causes of the failure of their marriage.
The church was very important to Angelou, as she considered it a part that
defines her black heritage that is impossible to waive. Nevertheless, Angelou‟s
dance career was very successful during her marriage. She first used her stage
name of Maya Angelou in 1953, when she performed at a cabaret called the
Purple Onion, in San Francisco (Nelson 13).

In order to join the Harlem Writer‟s Guild, Maya Angelou moved to

Brooklyn, New York, in the 1959. She co-wrote with actor Godfrey Cambridge
a play that she directed and performed in Cabaret for Freedom. In addition to
that, she also became active in the Civil Rights Movement (Cullum 25).

Moreover, in 1959, at the request of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, Maya
Angelou became the Northern coordinator for the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference. This was an organization that aimed at using
nonviolent resistance so that the African Americans get their equal rights (Abel
40).The death of Martin Luther on her birthday in 1968 was a big shock for
Angelou, and since his death she stopped celebrating it. Another Shock for
Maya Angelou was the death of her other friend Malcolm X in 1965.

Angelou established her literary reputation in the 1970‟s despite her

desperate early years, and she progressively succeeded to be a singer, dancer,
and actor. She wrote more than 30 books, including poetry, essays, and six
autobiographies.

Maya Angelou has creative achievements in numerous genres and

disciplines. Thanks to her poetry and prose she has earned National Book
Award and Pulitzer Prize nominations. In addition to that, Angelou received an
Emmy nomination in 1977 for her role in the television adaptation of Alex
Haley‟s Roots. She won three Grammy Awards for spoken-word recordings of

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her poetry and prose and was invited by President-elect Bill Clinton. Angelou
recited the poem 'On the Pulse of Morning', that she had written for the
occasion of the inauguration of President Bill Clinton, on 20 January 1993.
This stood as one of the unforgettable moments for many Americans. Angelou
passed away after declining health on May 28, 2014 at her home in Winston-
Salem, N.C. at the age of 86 (Brown 2014).

Robert Loomis told her that it was impossible to write an autobiography

as literature, and to forget about it. This is what made her challenge him and
strongly decide to do it. She had flash backs to the days she stopped talking and
remembered a poem that starts with “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
alas.”(Quoted by Agins 76) so it was the title of her book.

In her first autobiography and memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings (1969) she portrays everything about racism and trauma of the sexual
abuse that she went through during her childhood and also about her love for
literature and books.

2.3 .Trauma in I know why the Caged Bird Sings

Life is full of ups and downs and one can be exposed to many failures
and frustrations. However, s/he should never give up, but instead hold on and
face these failures and defeats in order to succeed and overcome them:

You may encounter many defeats, but you must not be defeated.
In fact, it may be necessary to encounter the defeats, so you can
know who you are, what you can rise from, how you can still
come out of it. Maya Angelou. (Quoted by Baker, & Val 49)

Maya Angelou‟s autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is

full of traumatic experiences that she portrayed starting from her childhood
when she was abandoned by her parents and sent with her brother to live with
their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas at an early age. Her life was not stable
and she suffered from the repeated displacement. Angelou describes also her
suffering from being a black girl, living in the south, in a harsh and racist

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society, where she was mistreated and rejected by society, just because of her
black color. In addition to this, little Maya experienced a sexual assault from
her mother‟s lover. This horrible experience had such a strong psychological
impact on her, that she stopped talking and felt guilty and culprit. Here are
some of these traumatic events or factors that made little Maya psychologically
sick:

2.3.1 Displacements

The crucial period for a person‟s self-image is her/his childhood. A child

starts questioning her/himself and her/his entourage about many things. If one
just tried to imagine the feeling of a child that is rejected and abandoned by
her/his parents who send her/him to live away from them, and the questions
that can come to her/his small mind, then s/he might figure out what Maya
endured in her childhood. In this autobiography Angelou provides us with a
description of all what she went through during her childhood and her suffering
from repeated displacements.

Maya‟s first displacement can be detected when she was sent at the age
of three with her brother Bailey who was one year older than her, to Arkansas,
Southern America, to live with their parental grandmother „Momma‟. She
wrote: “When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little
town, […] we were Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr. from Long Beach,
California, en route to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson.” (7)

Hence, Maya was too little to live away from her parents, and
experience the displacements. As a child, she dealt with difficult realities both
in the American south with the cruelty of its people, and the lack of her
parents‟ tenderness. Maya felt abandoned and rejected by her parents,
especially for the note that was written on her wrist and that of her brother.
Furthermore, her parents‟ indifference is shown when they addressed the note
to any person that is concerned, instead of addressing it directly to Momma,

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“…wearing tags on our wrists which instructed—„To Whom It May Concern‟ ”

(7)

Until the day when she and her brother received some Christmas
presents, Maya was completely convinced that her parents were dead, since she
never thought that they can be alive and leave her for that long period without
asking about her or visiting her: “Until that Christmas when we received the
gifts, I had been confident that they were both dead” (56). Maya expressed her
deepest pain for not having her mother by her side and how she dreamed of her
and how she may look like. It is clear that Maya was crying for not being able
to feel what other children who share and enjoy the tenderness of their parents
did. It caught her like a knife the fact that she could not even know how her
mother looked like. This lack of parents‟ presence made her dive in her own
imagination and draw in her little mind a picture of her mother:

I could cry anytime I wanted by picturing my mother (I didn‟t

quite know what she looked like) lying in her coffin. Her hair,
which was black, was spread out on a tiny little white pillow and
her body was covered with a sheet. The face was brown, like a
big O, and since I couldn‟t fill in the features I printed M O T H E
R across the O, and tears would fall down my cheeks like warm
milk (56).

Furthermore, Maya felt a kind of betrayal from the closest persons in her
life; her parents, especially after receiving from her mother the gifts, Maya was
shocked and could not believe that her mother is alive, living in good
conditions and despite what she did to her kids. What was in the boxes
surprised Maya and made her even sadder than before. She preferred to isolate
herself in the backyard behind a tree, and then her brother Bailey came after
her with the same amount of grief. Receiving such gifts made their little minds
think about many things and questioning themselves about their faults and
about their guilt which made their parents leave them at an early age. They did
not have anything to do but crying themselves again:

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…but after I opened my boxes I went out to the backyard behind

the chinaberry tree. […] I looked up and Bailey was coming from
the outhouse, wiping his eyes. He had been crying too. The gifts
opened the door to questions that neither of us wanted to ask.
Why did they send us away? And what did we do so wrong? So
wrong? Why, at three and four, did we have tags put on our arms
to be sent by train alone from Long Beach, California, to Stamps,
Arkansas, with only the porter to look after us? (57)

This part shows how Maya and her brother chose to keep silence after
what happened expressing their anger and sadness. Even though there was
Momma who tried her best to cheer them up, she did not succeed, because what
they really lacked was their parents‟ tenderness. Maya‟s anger and deep
sadness is clearly portrayed when her grandmother asked her and her brother if
they wanted to give back the gifts to Santa:

When we still didn‟t force ourselves to answer, she asked, „You

want me to tell Santa Claus to take these things back?‟ A
wretched feeling of being torn engulfed me. I wanted to scream,
„yes. Tell him to take them back.‟ But I didn‟t move (57)

This part indicates that Maya had not enough courage to speak what she
wanted to say as many times before. Instead, she kept everything inside herself.
This made her psychological state even worse.

Moreover, another displacement scene is described when Maya was only

eight and her father came to Stamps unexpectedly to take her and her brother
with him to live with their mother in California. Once there, Maya‟s life was
turned upside down, when she experienced a terrible sexual abuse and became
mute and traumatized. Her displacement continued, and again she was sent
back to her grandmother‟s house in the South. There, she dealt with many
racist and cruel situations that dominated the southern American society at that
time.

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2.3.2. Racism and Social Rejection

Maya Angelou‟s resistance against racism and her insistence to survive and
succeed was a kind of recompense/reward for her ancestors who struggled
against slavery and who dreamed of freedom and success:

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

Maya Angelou from her poem „Still I Rise‟ (“The World‟s

Poetry Archive” 23)

To be a Black American girl and live in the south, where society praises
the white beauty, was very difficult for Maya. She felt unattractive, and
considered herself as an ugly girl, comparing to the white beauty. Thus, the
feeling of inferiority played a role at shaping her psychological state and
defined her in a way that is completely different from whom she is in the
inside. Maya had imaginations and dreams that one day she could wake up
from the ugly blackness to a white reality. It is obvious that Maya suffered
from a problem of identity when she considered herself a white girl:

Wouldn‟t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black

ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would
take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn‟t let me
straighten? My light blue eyes were going to hypnotize them […]
Then they would understand why I had never picked up a
Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be
forced to eat pigs‟tails and snouts. Because I was really white and
because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous
of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy
black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would
hold a number-two pencil. (4-5)

These lines only reveal how the southern racist society affected Maya‟s
little mind and let her think that beauty equaled the white skin, fair hair and
blue eyes. And even worse, these beliefs made Maya lose her identity trying to

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imitate the way white people speak and eat and led her to feel ashamed being a
black ugly girl.

Another image of the racism and discrimination that Black Americans

were living in Stamp, Arkansas, of the 1930‟s 1940‟s, when Angelou stated:
“In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most of Black children didn‟t
really, absolutely know what whites looked like.” (27) Black Americans were
badly treated, humiliated, and under the political, economic and social white
power. Hence, they were not given much importance and were segregated and
isolated in everything (schools, restrooms…etc).

Furthermore, this autobiographical book describes how Maya endured

the pain of the prejudice of the “powhitetrash” who lived on her grandmother‟s
land, and who were very annoying and encroached Momma‟s privacy in the
store that even Maya didn‟t dare to do:

Some families of powhitetrash lived on Momma‟s farm land

behind the school. Sometimes a gaggle of them came to the store,
filling the whole room, chasing out the air and even changing the
well-known scents. The children crawled over the shelves and
into the potato and onion bins, twanging all the time in their sharp
voices like cigar-box guitars. They took liberties in my Store that
I would never dare (30).

Angelou then showed what was even worse about these powhitetrash
girls who treated Maya‟s grandmother rudely just because of her color and
race, as many African Americans who lived in the South at that time, and who
were seen as a second class citizen. However, their rudeness did not affect
Maya‟s grandmother with anything since the latter was a strong and wise lady
who thought for the consequences before any reaction and avoided being in
troubles, and did not want to return back the bad treatment of the powhitetrash
girls. Maya had the feeling of frustration and anger, not being able to speak or
react against what the rude white girls did to her dear grandmother, because the
latter ordered her not to do and to stay inside the store. As a result, Maya inside
herself died of rage and pain. This scene, especially when she could not

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interfere, swallowed her words and watched them mocking at her grandmother,
frustrated her even more:

When I was around ten years old, those scruffy children caused
me the most painful and confusing experience I had ever had with
my grandmother […] I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper
in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were
dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but I knew I was as clearly
imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined
to their roles (31-33).

One of the important parts that show excessive racism in Stamps is the
dentist scene. There was no Black doctor in Stamps, which made black people
like Momma try to manage their pain and aches by themselves. She wrote
“Since there was no Negro dentist in Stamps, nor doctor either, for that matter,
Momma had dealt with previous toothaches by pulling them out.” (199).The
only dentist was a racist white who refused to treat Maya when she suffered
from a terrible toothache. He did not like black Americans and found them
disgusting and he was offensive to the extreme when he said that he would
touch a dog rather than Maya‟s mouth: “He let go of the door and step nearer
Momma. The three of us were crowded on the small landing. „Annie, my
policy is I‟d rather stick my hand in a dog‟s mouth than in a nigger‟s‟.” (203)

As a child who cannot wait to get rid of the pain, it was not easy for
Maya to hear such a thing from a racist white dentist, and it was another
terrible feeling of racial discrimination that little Maya felt, swallowed and
endangered even worse her inner world.

Furthermore, the part of the book when Maya worked at Mrs. Cullinan‟s
house who was a white racist woman shows another scene of racism against
Maya. Even though she called her Margaret instead of Marguerite, Maya did
accept it and gave her an excuse that she could not pronounce well. However,
when a friend of Mrs. Cullinan suggested to her to call Maya Mary instead of
Margaret to shorten it, “That‟s too long. She is Mary from now on” (118),
Maya became irritated and felt insulted because:

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

Every person I knew had a hellish of being „called out of his

name.‟ It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that
could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of
their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows,
boots and spook (118).

Mrs. Cullinan‟s scene is one of the parts that show how white
Americans did not lose the opportunity to insult blacks. Maya who felt
affronted when Mrs. Cullinan tried to call her by another name rather than her
own took a reaction and broke her favorite dishes. As Mrs. Cullinan was
extremely racist, she exploded all the hatred that she had inside herself toward
blacks when she said: “That clumsy nigger. Clumsy little black nigger.” (120)

Another scene that reveal the racist attitude of white Americans is when
Mr. Edward Donleavy, a white speaker in the graduation ceremony, insulted
the black audience by telling them that the White school had received new
science lab equipment and famous artist to teach them art, however, the Black
school had graduated many fine and promising athletes and a prospect for the
Agricultural and Mechanical school. Maya then felt inferior and incapable to
do anything or to defend her black race:

Donleavy had exposed us […] It was awful to be Negro and have

no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already
trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my
color with no chance of defense. She wrote (194)

But in fact what really was going to ruin her child life and grew in her the
most heinous feeling she ever experienced is still to come; her sexual abuse.

2.3.3. Sexual Abuse

The worst thing that can happen to a child is rape, especially if this rape
was committed by someone inside home. When Maya was in a visit to her
mother‟s home, she had nightmares and found difficulties to sleep. Thus, she
used to sleep with both her mother and Mr. Freeman. The latter, took the
advantage of the absence of Vivian, and was molesting the little girl many

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

times, until he sexually abused her. She wrote that “The act of rape on an eight
years old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can‟t”
(84).As a child of 8 years old, Maya was not aware of what Mr. Freeman was
really doing. She was confused and puzzled. Later on, Mr. Freeman threatened
little Maya that he would kill her brother Bailey, if she tells anyone what
happened: “If you ever tell anybody what we did, I‟ll have to kill Bailey” (80).

In this part, Angelou stated how Bailey was so very close to her that he
succeeded to make her finally disclose the truth to him and how he couldn‟t
keep the secret that enraged him and killed him deeply inside: “Bailey cried at
the side of my bed until I started to cry too […] he gave his information to
Grandmother” (89).After he told Momma about what happened, Mr. Freeman
was arrested and went to trial. Furthermore, the part when Maya was
questioned in the Court if there was a prior abuse before he raped her, showed
how she was afraid and ashamed. This fear and distress led her to keep silence
instead of telling the truth about what really happened to her and that Mr.
Freeman attacked her many time before the rape. She was wondering about
their reactions if she confesses the truth:

I couldn‟t say yes and tell them how he had loved me once for
few minutes and how he had held me close before he thought I
had peed in the bed. My uncles would kill me and Grandmother
Baxter would stop speaking, as she often did when she was angry.
And all those people in the court would stone me as they had
stoned the harlot in the bible. And mother, who thought I was
such a good girl, would be disappointed. But most important,
there was Bailey. I had kept a big secret from him. (91).

After that, Mr. Freeman was released from prison the same day of the
trial, and Maya‟s enraged uncles beat him to death. Believing that it was her
fault of lying in the court, Maya was traumatized and blamed herself for the
death of Mr. Freeman: “He was gone, and a man was dead because I lied” (93).
She stopped talking for five years, except with Bailey; “The only thing I could
do was to stop talking to people other than Bailey” (93).

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

Therefore, Angelou and her brother Bailey were sent back to live with
their grandmother in Stamps (94). Once there, Momma made her best to help
Maya overcome her trauma. In this part of the book, she introduced Maya to a
lovely and very educated woman called Mrs. Flowers who changed Maya‟s
outlook on life.

2.4. Recovery from Trauma in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Anyone who goes through tough situations needs someone or something

to lean on and a refuge to feel safe. Maya Angelou found her safety and home
in literature and reading books by which she could gain her self-identity:

When I look back, I am so impressed again with the life-giving

power of literature. If I were a young person today, trying to gain a
sense of myself in the world, I would do that again by reading, just
as I did when I was young. Maya Angelou (quoted in Phillips 182)

Maya Angelou‟s life was not that easy to live. I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings, her best known and most influential memoir, portrays how she
experienced many tough and traumatic events that psychologically affected her,
and shaped her personality. These incidents and experiences that she faced at
an early age and continued till her teenage years led her to think about her
identity and to expand herself-awareness and to shift from her psychological
trauma and insecurity, to self-esteem, recovery and free her imprisoned words.

Maya's imagination and her desire to escape from her frustrating and
gloomy reality in Stamps drove her to classic literature, in particular white
writers; Shakespeare, Kipling, Poe, Thackeray, and James Weldon Butler, and
also black authors like; Paul Dunbar, Langston Hughes, W E. B. Du Bois, and
James Weldon Johnson. Maya studied hard and dived in reading books of
those authors that she fell in love with their pieces of writings:

During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William
Shakespeare. He was my first white love. Although I enjoyed and
respected Kipling, Poe, Butler, Thackeray and Henley, I saved
my young and loyal passion for Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Langston

39
Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

Hughes, James Weldon Johnson and W.E.B. Du Bois‟ „Litany at

Atlanta‟ (16).

Literature was Maya‟s salvation especially where it is portrayed how she

was interested by white stories and living with white characters inside books
especially when she said: “…a sensation that made poets gush out rhyme after
rhyme, that made Richard Arlen brave the Arctic wastes and Veronica Lake
betray the entire free world?” (303).It was very important for her to read and
without any racist thoughts she read both black writer‟s books and whites‟
ones.

Maya Angelou the African-American poet, writer and activist portrayed

in a lecture in 1990 her love for Shakespeare. She stated that living in poverty
in the southern American society and experiencing racism, she felt Shakespeare
spoke to her at a point that she knew „William Shakespeare was a black
woman‟ (Eaglestone11).

The part of the book when Angelou retuned back to Stamps, Arkansas,
recounts how her grandmother Momma introduced her to Mrs. Bertha Flowers,
who was an elegant educated and respectful Black woman that was an idol for
Maya, “She was one of the few gentlewomen I have ever known, and has
remained throughout my life the measure of what a human being can be […]
she made me proud to be a Negro, just by being herself” (102-103).

Mrs. Flowers created in little Maya the power and feelings of Black
pride and self-esteem when she helped her to regain her voice very wisely and
convinced her with gentle words; “Now no one is going to make you talk—
possibly no one can. But bear in mind, language is man‟s way of
communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates
him from the lower animals.” (104). It was a new idea to Maya which needed
time to think about, and most importantly made Maya feel that need to express
herself.

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

Another part shows how Mrs. Flowers‟ words motivated Maya to speak
again, when she said “Your grandmother says you read a lot. Every chance you
get. That‟s good, but not good enough. Words mean more than what is set
down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with the shades of
deeper meaning.” (104). Mrs. Flowers‟ words seemed very poetic and valid to
little Maya that she memorized a part of them. In addition to that, the fact that
Mrs. Flowers provided Maya with some books and asked her to read them
aloud created inside her a love and passion of poetry and books. This passion
increased and expanded her imagination and fantasy.

Hence, Mrs. Flowers created inside Maya a kind of passion for poetry
throughout her special and wonderful reciting of poems, and thanks to her
intelligent and gentle trials with Maya to make her speak, Maya finally did:

She opened the first pages and I heard poetry for the first time of
my life […] „How do you like it?‟ It occurred to me that she
expected a response. The sweet vanilla flavor was still on my
tongue and her reading was a wonder in my ears. I had to speak. I
said, „Yes, Ma‟am.‟ It was the least I could do, but it was the
most also (108-109).

Consequently, Angelou showed in this part how the act of reciting

poetry became a way for her to speak aloud, which was very helpful for her to
start speaking again with other persons. In fact, books, poetry, and
conversations with Mrs. Flowers had a positive impact on Maya. Over many
months, Maya became more confident, and began writing her own poems at the
age of nine (Agins 15).

The part that holds how Maya described Mrs. Flowers and how she
likened her to the women of the English novels shows that Maya was very
influenced by the women characters of these English books which she read:

She appealed to me because she was like people I had never met
personally. Like women in English novels who walked the moors
(whatever they were) with their loyal dogs racing at a respectful
distance. Like the women who sat in front of roaring fireplaces,

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

drinking tea incessantly from silver trays full of scones and

crumpets. Women who walked over the „heath‟ and read
morocco-bound books and had two last names divided by a
hyphen (103).

Moreover, Angelou stated the way Mrs. Flowers instilled in her the love
of education and gave her a lesson to remember for her whole life, about
illiterate people. She encouraged her to be intelligent enough to understand
wise people‟s sayings and that from their mouths one can learn wisdom and
maturity rather than from some educated ones:

As I ate she began the first of what we later called „my lesson in
living.‟ She said that I must always be intolerant of ignorance but
understanding of illiteracy. That some people, unable to go to
school, were more educated and even more intelligent than
college professors. She encouraged me to listen carefully to what
country people called mother wit. That in those homely sayings
was couched the collective wisdom of generation (108).

Later on, Maya showed how she employed Mrs. Flowers‟ lesson about
the power of the word in her real life in Mrs. Cullinan‟s chapter when she
broke her favorite dishes because the latter ignored an important word which is
Maya‟s name and which represents her identity and thus Maya could not
handle it anymore and decided to get herself fired by breaking her favorite
dishes, which was her brother‟s idea: “ Then Bailey solved my dilemma […] I
kept his instruction in mind, so on the next day […] I dropped the empty
serving tray” (119).

Her graduation in Stamps was an important part of the book and was a
kind of shifting from her trauma, shyness and feeling of inferiority into a great
power of self-confidence and resisting against racial oppression. Especially
when Maya showed at the end how proud she was being from the black race “I
was a proud member of the wonderful beautiful Negro race” (198).

Maya studied at the Lafayette Country Training School, and was a good
student. After four years, in 1940, Maya graduated from eight grades at top of

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her class at the age of twelve. Eight-grade graduating class of Maya joined the
high school seniors for the commencement ceremony (Agins 16).

The day of Maya‟s graduation had a very special trace on her, in which
she was extremely happy and excited: “Amazingly the great day finally
dawned and I was out of bed before I knew it [...] I hope the memory of that
morning would never leave me” (188).

She received gifts and encouragements before her graduation, as it is

portrayed in her book:

Uncle Willie and Momma had sent away for a Mickey Mouse
watch like Bailey‟s. Louise gave me four embroidered
handkerchiefs. (I gave her three crocheted doilies.) Mrs. Sneed,
the minister‟s wife, made me an under skirt to wear for
graduation, and nearly every customer gave me a nickel or maybe
even a dime with the instruction „keep on moving to higher
ground,‟ or some such encouragement (187-188).

Throughout the second half of the book Maya recognized how the
imagination can help the power of words to great ends. The end of the
graduation scene can explain her awareness exactly after the racist speaker
insulted the black audience. The class valedictorian Henry Reed proudly gave a
speech that lifted Maya and the others‟ spirits and then singing James Weldon
Johnson‟s “Lift Ev‟ry Voice and Sing” which was the Negro national anthem:

Lift ev‟ry voice and sing

Till earth and heaven ring

Ring with the harmonies of Liberty…(196)

Maya and her brother later went to live in San Francisco with her mother
Vivian and her new husband Daddy Clidell, where she felt comfortable unlike
with her real father and his wife Dolores. She wanted to make a change in her
life and getting a job that suited her:

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

But the need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my
mind. […] I would go to work. […] Once I had settled on getting
a job, all that remained was to decide which kind of job I was
most fitted for. (283)

In this part of the book Maya stated how proud she was about her level
of studies, and how she did not accept any work, but instead, she chose the one
that attracted her most: “My intellectual pride had kept me from selecting
typing, shorthand or filing as subjects in school, so office work was ruled out.”
(283). Maya decided to be a streetcar conductor and challenged the rules that
refused colored women to do such work:

Women had replaced men on the streetcars as conductors and

motormen, and the thought of sailing up down the hills of San
Francisco in a dark-blue uniform, with a money changer at my
belt, caught my fancy. […] Mother was as easy as I had
anticipated. […] To her question of what I planned to do, I replied
that I would get a job on the streetcars. She rejected the proposal
with: „They don‟t accept colored people on the streetcars.‟ I
would like to claim an immediate fury which was followed by the
noble determination to break the restricting tradition. (284)

Even though at first she was disappointed of such rule, but her
determination to achieve her dream made her insist to do it and break the rule
for once. Besides that, her mother encouraged her to do it if she really wanted
to: “Mother gave me support with one of her usual terse asides, „That‟s what
you want to do? Then nothing beats a trial but failure. Give it everything
you‟ve got.” (284) Thus, this encouragement made Maya eager to make her
dream come true. The part written in capital letters clearly showed her
insistence to become a streetcar conductor no matter what it took: “I WOULD
HAVE THE JOB. I WOULD BE A CONDUCTORETTE AND SLING A
FULL MONEY CHANGER FROM MY BELT. I WOULD.” (287). Indeed,
after a huge struggle she made her dream come true and became the first black
woman car conductress: She wrote “I was hired as the first Negro on the San
Francisco streetcars” (289).

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

As a high school teenager, Maya wanted to go out of her shell and break
her chains of ugliness and blackness that made her feel less feminine and less
beautiful. Thus, for her the solution was having a boyfriend who accepts her
and who changes her life into a better one in terms of beauty and femininity.
“What I needed was a boyfriend. A boyfriend would clarify my position to the
world and, even more important, to myself. A boyfriend‟s acceptance of me
would guide me into that strange and exotic land of frills and femininity.”
(300).

Maya had the feeling of an unattractive girl who cannot please any boy
and that it was impossible for her to love and be loved back: “If the pretties
were expected to make sacrifice in order to „belong‟, what could the
unattractive female do?”(300). Thus, she found that the best way to have a
relationship is to seduce the most handsome boy. One night, Maya who was
walking alone met her crush; the latter saluted her and continued his way. In
this part of the story, it is portrayed how Maya did something unusual that
differed from her shy hesitating character; she asked him without any shyness
to have a sexual relationship somewhere with her: “‟Hello Marguerite‟. He
nearly passed me. I put the plan into action. „Hey‟. I plunged, „Would you like
to have a sexual intercourse with me?‟[…] I had the advantage and so I pressed
it. „Take me somewhere‟” (301)

This relationship that Maya had with the boy led to pregnancy.
Nevertheless, Maya did not give up this time, and instead she decided to bear
the responsibility of what she did: “...but this time I had to face the fact that I
had brought my new catastrophe upon myself” (304). She added: “I had neither
element in my personality, so I hefted the burden of pregnancy at sixteen onto
my own shoulders where it belonged.” (305). As it can be seen in this part,
Maya admitted that it was her fault and she did not have any right to put the
blame on the boy who only did what she asked him for. Here, Maya reached a
kind of maturity and self-responsibility.

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

It is portrayed that Maya trusted her brother Bailey a lot, when once
again she confessed everything to him, about her pregnancy and the latter
advised her not to tell their mother for she can order her to stop her studies: “I
finally sent a letter to Bailey, […] he cautioned me against telling Mother of
my condition. We both knew her to be violently opposed to abortions, and she
would very likely order me to quit school” (305). Consequently, this was a
reasonable decision she took, because thanks to her studies and graduation, she
could make her life a better one. Indeed, before she graduated, she did not let
anyone know about her pregnancy except Bailey who kept her secret,
supported her and stood by her side. Even though her relationship with her
crush did not last for so long which was only for one night and which led to her
pregnancy, Maya did not abort it and instead she decided to keep it and took
responsibility. This incident made her run to her favorite refuge which is
studies, books and graduation again; to forget all the pain she went through as a
single teenage future mother.

Consequently, Maya succeeded to graduate from San Francisco high

school with high degrees and despite all what she went through she did not let
her situation drive her to another trauma once again. Many teenagers who
experience pregnancy may be subject to trauma, abortion or what can be even
worse. However, Maya decided to keep the baby and could eventually make
her mother accept the situation. The birth of her son gave her more strength and
maturity and a huge willingness to increase her struggle, and made her also feel
needed and loved which was a special feeling that she felt for the first time.

By the end of her autobiography Maya tried to show how courageous

and brave she was when she could study and graduate despite her pregnancy, as
well as her responsibility as a single mother which gave her a huge insistence
to carry on her life and put an end to her trauma and weakness.

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Chapter Two: When Literature Becomes a Recovery

2.5. Conclusion

During the 1930s and 1940s Maya was only a poor Black little girl
living in the racism and segregation of the American South. Her unfair society,
the cruel and judgmental people and the bitterness and pain she handled for a
long time from the persons she trusted affected her psychologically and made
her think of something that made her live in her own world. Literature was that
refuge that Maya was seeking for. She made from books her best friends beside
Bailey. This love for literature and her teacher‟s support created a huge
insistence to break the silence and unfair restrictions she lived in, and led her to
bring out all her buried capacities and talents. Hopefully, Maya Angelou
succeeded to gain her own identity, self-consideration, and to have a look on
life from another perspective and with more maturity. All these achievements
were reached thanks to her determination to succeed and through her love for
literature.

47
General conclusion
 General Conclusion

America has constantly been a nation of racial diversity, where the role
of African Americans in shaping and being shaped in such a segregated society
was stated and reflected in their literary works and pieces of art.

Trauma was a major phenomenon that had an impact on the lives of

many black Americans, and which resulted from all the suffering and pain
they endured, and the hidden rage and desire to break the silence and stand up
for the change and cope with the hard situation. Yet, this change was seen as a
dream that was not easy to obtain and which demanded a lot of sacrifices and
determination in order to achieve it and overcome their blunt trauma which
affected their lives for so long. Thus, many writers dealt with this sensitive
subject of trauma and how it affected their ordinary lives and shaped their
personal and inner states.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Angelou’s most known

autobiography which holds the story of her own life from the age of 3 years old
to 16 where she treated many important themes and traumatic incidents that
marked her childhood.

Maya Angelou was influenced by many writers especially Shakespeare.

From her childhood, she made from books her special and dreaming world,
where she met and discovered many authors and characters that influenced her
and her personal character. Living with her grandmother in the American
segregated South of the 1930’s was not easy for her. As a black girl, she
handled many painful events and drank from the cup of bitterness in that period
of time. Nevertheless, she could gain the power after her terrible suffering and
learned how to dance in the rain.

Her love for literature and reading books made her pure soul fly with her
wide imagination and big dreams that one day she will attend her goals, break
the chains and free herself from everything that prevented her from what she
wanted to be. Despite all what Maya Angelou suffered from, she did not accept

49
 General Conclusion

the situation and the life she was tortured in, and instead she stood up for the
change.

It was a miracle that after all what Maya Angelou endured, she survived,
struggled, graduated from college, found the job she dreamt of, and continued
on her way toward success. The birth of her son Guy had a positive effect on
her when she discovered the meaning of motherhood and the feeling of being
needed. Above all, Maya learned about the power of love and hope for a better
life. Finally, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Angelou’s memoir and
autobiography in which she made the readers feel how literature helped her to
overcome her trauma and break her silence, and how literature can make
miracles in their lives. And the best lesson one can take from a traumatic
experience is not to give up on life but instead making it as a rock to step on
and rise up higher.

50
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