A Journey Of Searching For Liberation

Maya Angelou is a famous contemporary African American female writer. She takes her life experience as sources to write an autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. This autobiography is the first and the most important volume of her autobiography series and it reflects black women’s miserable life under racial discrimination. Scholars at home and abroad have done a lot of research about Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and have made great achievements, and most studies focus on the analysis of the work’s multiple themes, narrative strategies, language style, imagery, characters or conduct comparative studies. But until now, at least in China, few critics have conducted an overall and in-depth research on I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings with concrete and detailed black feminist theories.As a branch of feminism, black feminism emerges in the 1970s in the United States. It mainly studies the multiple oppressions of sexism, racism and class oppressions imposed on black women, and reveals the sufferings of black women caused by the multiple oppressions and provides methods for black women to get rid of these oppressions. bell hooks, one of the most famous black feminists, researches the essence of American society from the special perspective of gender, race, class, culture and their interrelationships. She creatively explains why the female are oppressed and how to liberate them. Therefore, this thesis employs bell hooks’ concept of black feminism to analyze this novel and intends to find the real oppressions that the black women have suffered and explore the approach of getting out of these oppressions. By representing black women’s sufferings under the multiple oppressions and black women’s explorations for liberation and freedom, Maya Angelou has offered an answer to solve the problem. Black women can finally gain liberation by loving life, constructing self-identity, seeking for sisterhood, uniting with black men and fighting with their unfair fate.This thesis analyzes the black feminism in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, including the oppressions that black women suffered and explorations of the approaches for their liberation. Meanwhile, this thesis also analyzes the new black female images in this novel. Under the multiple oppressions, black women’s way to liberation is a hard and long process. However, as long as they keep fighting against with the oppressions, they are bound to find their true existence and gain the real liberation.