Angelou, Maya - Pierre A. Walker (essay date October 1995)
Pierre A. Walker (essay date October 1995)
SOURCE: Walker, Pierre A. “Racial Protest, Identity, Words and Form in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” College Literature 22, no. 3 (October 1995): 91–109.
[In the following essay, Walker evaluates the political nature and influence of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.]
Maya Angelou has told in interviews how Robert Loomis, her eventual Random House editor, goaded her into writing autobiography, teasing her with the challenge of writing literary autobiography. Considering herself a poet and playwright, she had repeatedly refused Loomis's requests that she write an autobiography until he told her that it was just as well: “‘He … said that to write an autobiograph—as literature—is almost impossible. I said right then I'd do it’” (“Maya Angelou,” with Hitt 211). Angelou often admits that she cannot resist a challenge; however, it was not the...
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