Reading, Race, and Remembering Childhood Abuse—Returning to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 12648258 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Shelley Trower (0000-0002-5121-5357, University of Roehampton, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 385-392 |
| Publication date | 2021-12-27 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Life Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1448-4528 • E-ISSN: 1751-2964 |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/14484528.2021.2012020 |
| OpenAlex | W4200091551 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 4 |
For many readers, Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings stands out as a memorable, even life-changing book. Some readers have written autobiographically about reading this autobiographical text. In this essay, I look briefly at some of this writing about reading Angelou’s book, asking how it has affected different readers in the US and UK at different moments. For many, Angelou’s representation of Black experience in the American South, and of childhood sexual abuse, is crucial. I propose that for a reader such as myself, living in the wake of the widespread discrediting of ‘recovered memories’ that emerged in the 1990s, I Know Why could serve to destabilise the boundary between uncontested childhood memories and discredited memories of abuse
Art · Linguistics · Literature · Maya · Poison control · Politics · Race (biology · Reading (process · Representation (politics · Sexual abuse · Sociology · Suicide prevention · Gender Studies · History · Law · Philosophy · Psychology · Themes in Literature Analysis
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |