What is Maya Angelou best known for?
Maya Angelou was a civil rights activist, poet and award-winning author known for her acclaimed 1969 memoir, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ and her numerous poetry and essay collections.
How did Maya Angelou change the world?
She took on so many roles: she was a writer, poet, filmmaker, actor, dancer, civil rights activist, and much more. Civil rights activist: Angelou was active in the Civil Rights movement and served as the northern coordinator for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in 1959.
What is an interesting fact about Maya Angelou?
Interesting Facts about Maya Angelou I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was the first nonfiction best-selling book by an African-American woman. She had one son, Guy Johnson, at the age of seventeen. In 1973, she was nominated for a Tony Award for her role in the play Look Away.
What made Maya Angelou a poet?
Angelou studied and began writing poetry at a young age, and used poetry and other great literature to cope with trauma, as she described in her first and most well-known autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Early in her writing career, she began alternating a volume of poetry with an autobiography.
Why do the caged birds sing?
Like elements within a prison narrative, the caged bird represents Angelou’s confinement resulting from racism and oppression. The caged bird metaphor also invokes the “supposed contradiction of the bird singing in the midst of its struggle”.
What plea does the caged bird sent to heaven?
The poem concludes with the revelation that what appears to be singing to the those outside the cage is not really a song at all, but a prayer the bird sends to heaven as a plea for release from his bondage.
Why does the Free Bird think of another breeze?
The free bird thinks of another breeze because he is used to leading a life of ease. (ii) The caged bird had aspirations and desires to achieve something. But on account of his captivity, he was helpless. His dreams were sniffed and stifled.
How does the poet contrast the free bird and the caged bird?
Sometimes, the caged bird opens his throat to sing. Angelou puts greater emphasis on the lamentable state of the caged bird, and contrasts this with that of the free bird. As the poet depicts in the poem, the free bird floats on the back of the wind, dips his wings in the orange sun rays and claims the sky as his own.