Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: A Casebook (Casebooks in Criticism) - Softcover

Braxton, Joanne M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0195116070 ISBN 13: 9780195116076

Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1998

Synopsis

With the continued expansion of the literary canon, multicultural works of modern literary fiction and autobiography have assumed an increasing importance for students and scholars of American literature. This exciting new series assembles key documents and criticism concerning these works that have so recently become central components of the American literature curriculum. Each casebook will reprint documents relating to the work's historical context and reception, present the best in critical essays, and when possible, feature an interview of the author. The series will provide, for the first time, an accessible forum in which readers can come to a fuller understanding of these contemporary masterpieces and the unique aspects of American ethnic, racial, or cultural experience that they so ably portray.

Perhaps more than any other single text, Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings helped to establish the "mainstream" status of the renaissance in black women's writing. This casebook presents a variety of critical approaches to this classic autobiography, along with an exclusive interview with Angelou conducted specially for this volume and a unique drawing of her childhood surroundings in Stamps, Arkansas, drawn by Angelou herself.

About this title

About the Author:

Joanne M. Braxton is at College of William and Mary.

Review:

"Could be easily enjoyed by scholars, students, and other interested readers... Such a series is timely and necessary, and illustrates the growing importance of ethnic American literature in education and society at large...Braxton's Casebook offers readers a valuable resource for studying
Angelou's text from a variety of perspectives." Rocky Mountain Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0195116070
• ISBN 13: 9780195116076
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 176