A black woman growing up in the south is the paramount sign of racism and sexism due to the segregation and physical abuse by men. In order to challenge this prevailing ideal, Maya Angelou wrote I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings as a memoir of growing up black during the enforcement of the Jim Crow Laws, and to proclaim the rape she experienced. Therefore, Maya Angelou’s odyssey to find her identity not only impacted her life, but for feminism as well, challenging the underlying sexist and racist attitudes in America through confidence and wisdom.
Undoubtedly, one of the most conspicuous things about Angelou was the way she portrays confidence as a dancer and singer at a nightclub. She embraces the standards of beauty expected of women during the 1950s, by being barefoot and wearing an African-inspired outfit (Source D). Immediately, Angelou confronts the repressed sexist and racist positions in America by emerging as an assertive woman and most importantly to address her judgment of what an African American and feminist should be. Furthermore, Gavin Aung, cartoonist of “Phenomenal Woman”, also highlights the uprising attitude of Angelou. Aung draws her as a young girl, however, Angelou depicts her courage when she
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And in doing so, she builds her own trajectory by appealing to the audience as a “survivor, intellectual, single mother, an activist, and a radical advocate for women’s rights” (Source A). Although this may be true, in the song “You Put It on Me” by B.B King, King states that the woman in his life “stopped his partying” and he is “so glad” (Source C). Certainly, the woman behind this song is Angelou and it is this woman who transformed his life for the better. In fact, Maya Angelou’s personal journey to find her identity not only impacted her life, but the life of men as well, questioning the repressed sexist and racist stance in America through