Creating the Black Female Subject and Rewriting Black Womanhood in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
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This paper aims to explore a new black female subject in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (hereafter Caged Bird) and read the protagonist’s subject formation as part of the autobiographical subject’s constructing her own subjectivity by organizing memories and rewriting black womanhood distorted by the dominant racial ideology. Caged Bird basically deals with a coming-of-age story of a marginalized black girl who grows up to be a black woman with positive sexual and racial identities through the journey to establish a worthwhile subject. Abandoned by her parents, faced with racist oppression of the South and raped by her mother’s boyfriend at age 8, Maya suffers from psychological instability, loss of self-esteem, and identity crisis. However, she overcomes all the familial, sexual and racial challenges, constructing a positive black female subject in the black community, especially in the relationships with black adult women. Angelou, arranging and organizing her memories and experiences, creates an active, independent, dignified black female subject and rewrites black womanhood distorted by the dominant culture. By rewriting black womanhood against the negative stereotypes and connecting black women’s positive subjectivities, the autobiographer Angelou, through Maya’s subject formation, creates a new hybridized black female subject who is continuously growing and developing.
Abstract
This paper aims to explore a new black female subject in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (hereafter Caged Bird) and read the protagonist’s subject formation as part of the autobiographical subject’s constructing her own subjectivity by organizing memories and rewriting black womanhood distorted by the dominant racial ideology. Caged Bird basically deals with a coming-of-age story of a marginalized black girl who grows up to be a black woman with positive sexual and racial identities through the journey to establish a worthwhile subject. Abandoned by her parents, faced with racist oppression of the South and raped by her mother’s boyfriend at age 8, Maya suffers from psychological instability, loss of self-esteem, and identity crisis. However, she overcomes all the familial, sexual and racial challenges, constructing a positive black female subject in the black community, especially in the relationships with black adult women. Angelou, arranging and organizing her memories and experiences, creates an active, independent, dignified black female subject and rewrites black womanhood distorted by the dominant culture. By rewriting black womanhood against the negative stereotypes and connecting black women’s positive subjectivities, the autobiographer Angelou, through Maya’s subject formation, creates a new hybridized black female subject who is continuously growing and developing.
참고문헌 (23)
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