American Literature Identity What It Means to Be
and Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. From a strictly literary perspective, Emerson’s “Self Reliance” functions as an essay or polemic in which the author expounds on his philosophical standpoint, whereas Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiographical novel. As such, the latter contains much more symbolism and metaphor than the former, which offers a more straightforward insight into what it means to be American. Like other seminal works of African-American literature from slave narratives onwards, Angelou’s text focuses on the theme of liberation: of knowing that… Continue Reading...
