I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou has been honored by many universities and throughout her lifetime has received about fifty honorable degrees for her work. Maya Angelou also wrote her essay “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” on the struggles she faced as an African-American women, specifically in the time of her youth. Her audience seems to gravitate towards the general public as well as people who are interested in biographies pertaining to segregation. Throughout the essay the readers see how large of the struggle it is for her to keep her opinion to herself as she argues with her morals. The idea behind the essay is to demonstrate how she struggles greatly with her image, thinking that being African-American is “ugly”. She tends to think she is inferior to everyone, even her own family, which ends up greatly affects her self-confidence. It seems as though in the essay she is trying to find herself and her voice, but makes it severely difficult because she has such a negative body image of herself. It’s evident she wants to make a difference by using her voice, but is not there yet. Out of all of the essays she used the largest amount of rhetorical devices, such as similes, metaphors, personification, and biblical allusions. Overall they rhetoric devices further strengthened her point because they mainly made it easier for the readers to better comprehend her purpose. It did not only help with imagery, but also allowed the readers to connect to other similar events.  She clearly tried to get the readers to understand what she was feeling.

 

http://www.voicedialogueonline.com/how-can-i-stop-self-sabotaging-behaviours-increase-my-self-esteem-and-build-confidence

Caption: Maya Angelou lived with the ideal of being a causion

 

                        Title: Lack of self-confidence