The many vivid descriptions and recreations of Angelou's early life in this volume also beg the question of how Angelou could manage to remember such tiny details from her childhood well enough to reconstruct them in the book.Īngelou wrote this autobiography for several reasons one was as a reminder not to give in during the trials of growing up. The work could also be thought of as combining fictional techniques with autobiography since the story is told by an adult, who is recreating a childlike voice and point of view for the novel. However, Angelou also uses many stylistic elements more common to fiction works, like dialogue, fully fleshed-out characters, and close description of sensory details from her past. Maya's mother Vivian Baxter and her son Guy, born at the end of this book, are also central figures throughout Angelou's life story.Īs an autobiography, Caged Bird adheres to many conventions of the genre it features first-person narration, is organized chronologically, and is focused on the development of the self. All of her volumes center around the themes of family, self-discovery, and motherhood, though in terms of writing style and plot each of them is different. Out of the seven, it is probably the most popular and critically acclaimed volume, dealing with Angelou's childhood, up to her coming-of-age at sixteen. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first of seven volumes of Maya Angelou's autobiography, which cover the years from the early 1930's, up until about 1970.
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