Collinson Library: Literature11 Dr Maya Angelou: Historical Context

Historical Context:

Understanding "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" : A student casebook to issues, sources and historical documents by Joanne Megna-Wallace Maya Angelou's autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was nominated for a National Book Award. This interdisciplinary collection of documents and commentary explores the historical and social context, as well as the contemporary issues and controversies raised by Angelou's autobiography.
Call Number: eBOOK
Publication Date: 1998
The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry by Christopher Beach See Chapter "The Black Arts Movement. The Cambridge Introduction to Twentieth-Century American Poetry is designed to give readers a brief but thorough introduction to the various movements, schools, and groups of American poets in the twentieth century. In the second half of the book, the focus is on groups such as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, the New Critics, the Confessionals, and the Beats. In each chapter, discussions of the most important poems are placed in the larger context of literary, cultural, and social history.
Call Number: eBOOK
Publication Date: 2003

Oprah talks to Maya Angelou
The woman Oprah calls mentor-mother-sister-friend offers wise words about the roots of confidence, the trouble with modesty and how to do the impossible.

Historical Context: America in the 1930's

Strange Fruit

Explores the history and legacy of a song unique in the annals of American music. Popularised by Billie Holiday in 1939, Strange Fruit gives a bitter and harrowing description of a lynching. One of the most important protest songs ever written, it became a staple in Billie Holiday's career. Its lyrics were read on the floor of Congress during ultimately unsuccessful efforts to pass Federal anti-lynching legislation, and it has been recorded by dozens of artists since it was written in the mid 1930s. Yet relatively few people know it was written by a Jewish school teacher from the Bronx. While many people mistakenly assume that Strange Fruit was written by Holiday herself, the words and music were actually written by Abel Meeropol, a New York City public school teacher and a Jew of Russian immigrant origin who published music under the name Lewis Allan. Meeropol's other best known composition was The House I Live In, most famously performed by Frank Sinatra. Abel Meeropol is also known for having adopted, with his wife Anne, the orphaned children of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg in 1953. The tale of the song Strange Fruit reflects on the lives of African-Americans, immigrant Jews, anticommunist government officials, radical Leftist organisers, music publishers and jazz musicians. It is a telling anecdote in the history of Black/Jewish relations, a story which includes episodes of poverty, prejudice, and lynching as well as of poetry, music and artistic expression. The documentary Strange Fruit tells a dramatic story of the American past using this song as its epicentre.

SOURCE: ClickView Exchange (2001), Broadcast on ABC1, Rated M, Duration 56:17 mins