establishment seems confused as to how to evalu-
ate this literary phenomenon and its popularity.
Taken together, the six volumes stage the ethno-
genesis of a representative 20th-century black
female consciousness. I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings (1970), published when Angelou was 41
years old, garnered impressive academic reviews
and marked a new era in black consciousness with
its rehearsal of black femininity and the dignity
of southern black lives lived amidst appalling rac-
ism and economic peonage. Gather Together in
My Name (1974) presents Maya as a young black
woman struggling for economic and emotional
security in segregated post–World War II Amer-
ica, and Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry like
Christmas (1976) shows her married and raising a
child in the 1950s, trying to establish a career on
the stage, and regularly encountering mainstream
white racism. The Heart of a Woman (1980) shows
a mature Maya who is mostly accounting for
her roles as black mother and black woman. All
God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986) pres-
ents Maya the poet, musician, and performer as a
journalist in Ghana and as an expatriate explor-
ing the promises of Pan-Africanism among black
American returnees. Perhaps the most literary
of these works since her first autobiography, this
volume forges links with her ancestors and the
slave past. It also records the history of the “lost
generation” of African-American expatriates in
Ghana and provides portraits of many African
dignitaries in the Nkrumah era, in the midst of an
African cultural renaissance. Though Angelou’s
search for an African identity ultimately eludes
her, she nevertheless finds the accepting spiritual
presence of her slave ancestors. A Song Flung Up
to Heaven (2002), the sixth volume, begins with
her return from Africa to work with MALCOLM X,
her miserable sojourn in Hawaii after his assassi-
nation; her recruitment by MARTIN LUTHER KING;
her experience of King’s assassination; her pres-
ence in Watts, Los Angeles, during the riots; and
her move to New York to find her way as a writer
among such black intellectuals as JAMES BALDWIN,
PAU L E MARSHALL, ROSA GUY, Abbey Lincoln, and
Max Roach. This volume is a künstlerroman con-
taining the account of her beginnings as a writer
during the height of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT as
she began working on the manuscript of I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings.
Angelou’s autobiographies mostly follow the
classic pattern of black autobiography: the jour-
ney out, the quest, the achievement, and the return
home. All six of her serial first-person narratives
arise directly from the aesthetics and traditions of
the slave narrative, the blues, the contemporary
African-American journey narrative, and formal
autobiography. Each is characterized by an affir-
mative pattern of moral growth and the recon-
struction of the collective myth of black female
identity. As blues traveler she confronts being
afraid and bereft through sheer style and cour-
age and offers picaresque progression experiences.
Her sympathies range across history, class, color
lines, communities, and whole continents. Recur-
ring themes include the role of the black mother,
eternal nostalgia for home, racial wounds, racial
freedom, sister friends, the call of Africa, the slave
presence, black female sexuality, WOMANIST val-
ues, dramatic confrontations, and accumulating
wisdom. The volumes all merge history, fact, fic-
tion, poetry, and religious experience. She always
provides a clear map of the inner racial surfaces of
American cultural history. Her gifted prose com-
bines remarkable metaphors, rich dialogues, vivid
street scenes, brilliant social portraiture, memo-
rable anecdotes, self-parody, and spiritual insights.
However, her enduring project is the ethnogenesis
of black womanhood. She is credited with devel-
oping serial autobiography as a significant literary
form within American letters.
Angelou has received more than 20 honorary
degrees from such prestigious academic institu-
tions as Brandeis University, Brown University,
University of South Carolina, University of North
Carolina at Greensboro, Lawrence University,
Wake Forest University, University of Durham,
and Columbia University. Her long list of awards,
fellowships, and recognitions include a Rockefeller
Foundation Fellowship; the Ladies’ Home Journal
Woman of the Year Award, 1975; a lifetime ap-
pointment as the Reynolds Professor of American14 Angelou, Maya