"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is an autobiographical work by Maya Angelou that explores her early life and the challenges she faced as an African American girl growing up in the segregated South. The narrative highlights Angelou's struggles with racism, identity, and trauma, including her experiences of sexual abuse and her journey toward self-acceptance. Through her poetic prose, Angelou captures her resilience and determination to rise above adversity. The book emphasizes the impact of race and gender on her life while celebrating the power of literature, family, and community in overcoming personal and societal obstacles. [Generated by language model - please report any problems].

This book is part of a book series called Social Issues in Literature .

This book is aimed at children at US 10th grade-12th grade.

This book has been graded for interest at 15-17 years.

There are 152 pages in this book.

It is aimed at Young Adult readers. The term Young Adult (YA) is used for books which have the following characteristics: (1) aimed at ages 12-18 years, US grades 7-12, UK school years 8-15, (2) around 50-75k words long, (3) main character is aged 12-18 years, (4) topics include self-reflection, internal conflict vs external, analyzing life and its meaning, (5) point of view is often in the first person, and (6) swearing, violence, romance and sexuality are allowed.

This book was published in 2007 by Cengage Gale .

CLAUDIA DURST JOHNSON is Professor of English at the University of Alabama, where she chaired the English Department for 12 years. She is the author of the forthcoming volumes in the Greenwood Press Literature in Context series, Understanding the Scarlet Letter and Understanding Huckleberry Finn . She is also author of To Kill a Mockingbird: Threatening Boundaries (1994), American Actress. Perspective on the Nineteenth Century (1984), (with Vernon E. Johnson) Memoirs of the Nineteenth-Century Theatre (Greenwood, 1982), The Productive Tension of Hawthorne's Art (1981), and (with Henry Jacobs) An Annotated Bibliography of Shakespearean Burlesques, Parodies, and Travesties (1976), as well as numerous articles on American literature.