Illustration of the silhouetted profile of a person's face and three birds next to an orange sun

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

by Maya Angelou

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings employs a rich array of literary devices to convey themes of race, identity, and freedom. Symbolism is prevalent, with the caged bird representing...

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The dialect used in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is primarily African American Vernacular English (AAVE), which is related to Southern American English and Creole dialects. Maya Angelou's...

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The caged bird in Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings symbolizes her own feelings of imprisonment and longing for freedom, paralleling the themes in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem "Sympathy"...

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