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This title includes in-depth critical discussions of Maya Angelou's novel. Maya Angelou's ""I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"" took the world by storm when it was published in 1969. As it shot to the top of best-seller lists, it made Angelou one of the most recognized black women in America. Despite controversy over its frank depiction of sexual abuse, the autobiography is still widely read in high schools and colleges across the country. Three decades after it was published, readers continue to admire Angelou's artistry, wit, and indomitable spirit. Edited by Mildred R. Mickle, Assistant Professor of English at Penn State Greater Allegheny, this volume brings together a variety of critical offerings on Angelou's famous autobiography. Mickle's introduction pays tribute to Angelou's achievement and examines the inspiration she drew from Phillis Wheatley's civil rights advocacy as well as the similarities between ""Caged Bird"" and Harriet Jacobs' ""Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl"" and Paul Lawrence Dunbar's poetry. ""The Paris Review""'s Christopher Cox reminds readers of how revolutionary Angelou's autobiography was when it was published and recounts the comments Angelou made on her work in an interview with George Plimpton. Four original essays by Amy Sickels, Pamela Loos, Neil Heims, and Robert C. Evans provide valuable context for reader's new to Angelou's work. Sickels discusses the historical events that surround Angelou's life: the civil rights, black power, and black arts movements as well as the emergence of black women's literature with the first publications of Toni Morrison, Nikki Giovanni, Alice Walker, and Lucille Clifton. Loos provides a survey of the major pieces of criticism on ""Caged Bird"", paying special attention to the book's early reception and how it fits in the autobiographical genre and slave narratives, as well as issues of race, gender, aesthetics, and identity. Neil Heims discusses the struggle for a black identity through readings of both ""Caged Bird"" and James Baldwin's ""If Beale Street Could Talk"". Finally, Robert C. Evans examines the role that both formal and informal education play in the young Maya's maturation. The collection also includes ten previously published essays that examine ""Caged Bird"" through a variety of lenses. Critics examine the character of young Maya, noting how her rootlessness contributes to her perseverance and adaptability, as well as how Angelou's narrative technique allows her to recount the details of incredible life without being controlled by them. The book's treatment of sexual abuse is also investigated in the larger context of other black women's narratives of sexual abuse. Other critics attend to ""Caged Bird""'s place in the genre of ethnic autobiography and the particular challenges it presents to teachers seeking to expose students multicultural literature; the childhood roots of Angelou's political activism; the influence of blues music on the narrative's structure; and, the young Maya's relationships with the black community, literature, and the women in her life.

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This new edition of ""Notable American Novelists"" presents biographical sketches and analytical overviews of 145 of the best-known American and Canadian writers of long fiction from the 19th and 20th centuries, arranged alphabetically by name. The set's three volumes survey the novelists, whose works are included in core curricula of high school and undergraduate literature studies. Essays on living authors and all the bibliographies in the articles are updated. About two-thirds of the essays are illustrated with portraits of the writers. ""Notable American Novelists"" features often-studied writers ranging from Nathaniel Hawthorne, Mark Twain, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, and Jack London to Joan Didion and J. D. Salinger. Other important nineteenth century figures include Herman Melville, James Fenimore Cooper, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and George Washington Cable. Among the other major twentieth century writers featured are Sinclair Lewis, Norman Mailer, Joyce Carol Oates, John Irving, E. L. Doctorow, Joseph Heller, Toni Morrison, Vladimir Nabokov, Thomas Pynchon, John Steinbeck, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Updike. One can also find essays on such widely read and popular authors as Stephen King, James Michener, Louisa May Alcott, Larry McMurtry, and Anne Rice. A major addition to this new edition is the inclusion of Canadian novelists: Margaret Atwood, Robertson Davies, Frederick Philip Grove, Margaret Laurence, Mordecai Richler, and Sinclair Ross. Each essay begins with a presentation of reference information: the novelist's birth and death dates and a list of the writer's principal works of long fiction, with publication dates. ""Other literary forms"" then briefly describes genres other than long fiction in which the writer has worked, and an ""Achievements"" section encapsulates the author's central contribution and notes major honors and awards. The major sections of the text follow: ""Biography"" provides a sketch of the author's life, and ""Analysis"" looks at the novelist's work in detail; this section examines central and well-known works in the author's canon and illuminates the themes and techniques of primary interest to the novelist. The longest section in the article, ""Analysis"" is divided into subsections on the writer's major individual works. Following ""Analysis"" is a categorized list, ""Other major works,"" that provides titles and dates of works the author has written in genres other than long fiction, including plays, poetry, short fiction, and nonfiction. Each essay concludes with an updated, annotated bibliography. All articles are signed by the principal writer and, where applicable, by the updating contributor. Three helpful reference features are included at the end of volume 3: a glossary entitled ""Terms and Techniques,"" a time line of the writers' birthdates, and an index.

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