Afro-American Feminism in Maya Angelou’s Poems: A Study of “Caged Bird” and “Phenomenal Woman”

Abstract

Towards the late 60’s and into the 70’s, African American literature became focused, more and more, on asserting an Afro centric identity and renewing links with African culture and sensibility. Alongside there was a great surge in Black Women’s writing with a number of black women insisting on being heard and taken seriously not only in the mainstream, but also within the black community. Maya Angelou represents the black woman of the 1960’s. She has found the place to reinvent the self, a site many other woman writers had been searching for. Her choice of writing is an endeavor to reconcile her fragmented split self, with racial and gender politics. The theme that remains consistent in her works is her struggle, as a black woman, to maintain her sense of individuality amid the unrelenting forces with its racist and sexist ideology. Angelou uses her writing as a tool for resisting and altering those ideologies, hegemonies and methodologies that have silenced and marginalized black women. This paper is an attempt to analyze discrimination towards black women which appears in Maya Angelou’s poems. The analysis will be based on the select poem of Angelou which include “Caged Bird” and “Phenomenal woman”.