Dan Fallu's Research: Difference between revisions
No edit summary |
No edit summary |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
==Caged Bird and the Road in Twentieth Century African-American Literature== | ==''Caged Bird'' and the Road in Twentieth Century African-American Literature== | ||
From the slave narratives of the mid-nineteenth century to modern novels, travel has found its place in African American literature. Oppressed by ignorant slave-owners, slaves in the United States in the nineteenth century were forced to run. Later, in the Great Migration, many African Americans left the farms and countryside and went to live in the cities of the North. In both cases African Americans sought a new life, and acceptance. Even in the twentieth century, travel finds its place in novels by African American authors like Maya Angelou. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou recounts her childhood, in which she is often on the move, being transferred between households and between guardians as she tries to find acceptance. Traveling While Angelou searches for acceptance, the road becomes both a blessing and a curse. As Sandra G. Shannon writes in “A Transplant that did not Take,” African Americans in literature who “aspire to relocate […] seemed doomed to failure, turmoil, restlessness, alienation, or possibly death. (Shannon 660)” For her, the road takes on both positive and negative roles as it relates to acceptance and a sense of belonging. | |||
Revision as of 05:00, 8 December 2005
Caged Bird and the Road in Twentieth Century African-American Literature
From the slave narratives of the mid-nineteenth century to modern novels, travel has found its place in African American literature. Oppressed by ignorant slave-owners, slaves in the United States in the nineteenth century were forced to run. Later, in the Great Migration, many African Americans left the farms and countryside and went to live in the cities of the North. In both cases African Americans sought a new life, and acceptance. Even in the twentieth century, travel finds its place in novels by African American authors like Maya Angelou. In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou recounts her childhood, in which she is often on the move, being transferred between households and between guardians as she tries to find acceptance. Traveling While Angelou searches for acceptance, the road becomes both a blessing and a curse. As Sandra G. Shannon writes in “A Transplant that did not Take,” African Americans in literature who “aspire to relocate […] seemed doomed to failure, turmoil, restlessness, alienation, or possibly death. (Shannon 660)” For her, the road takes on both positive and negative roles as it relates to acceptance and a sense of belonging.
