Dan Fallu's Research
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.
- The Road is a symbol of oppression
- The journey from Africa into slavery
- Marguerite's (Maya Angelou's) train ride into the South
- The Road is directly connected to Marguerite's feeling that she does not belong
- She is moved from household to household before she can settle in
- Marguerite is constantly required to change who she is to feel like she fits in
- The Road becomes a symbol of freedom
- The Underground Railroad
- Marguerite's revelation of freedom and independence on the car trip back from Mexico
For early African Americans, life in America literally involved a journey. In the twentieth century, with Maya Angelou and other writers such as Ralph Ellison , African American literature emphasizes the journey through life and across the nation, in search of acceptance and an escape from the chaos that causes the cycle of travel. Some find this comfort. For Maya Angelou it was the birth of her first child. As Mary Jane Lupton says in “Singing the Black Mother”: “with the birth of her child Maya is herself born into a mature engagement with the forces of life. (Lupton 258)” With the commitment of child-rearing, Marguerite (Maya) leaves the road, and its hardships. However much the constant travel between households hurt Maya, without the travel, she would never have been able to find comfort and acceptance as a mother.
Sources
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House,1970.
Lupton, Mary Jane. “Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity” Black American Literature Forum, Vol. 24, No. 2,
Mason, Mary G. “Travel as a Metaphor and reality in Afro-American Women’s Autobiogtaphy, 1850-1972” Black American Literature Forum. Vol. 24 (Summer 1990): 337-356
Rodnon, Stewart. “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Invisible Man: Thematic and Structural Comparisons.” Negro American Literature Forum. Vol. 4 (July 1970): 45-51
Shannon, Sandra G., “A Transplant That Did Not Take: August Wilson’s views on the Great Migration.” African American Review. 31.4 (1997): 659-667.
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