Maya AngelouÆs (1993) I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the authorÆs account of her life experiences from early and middle childhood through puberty and adolescence. Her experiences encompass many aspects of developmental psychology and theory, including development of self-concept and self-esteem, the impact of abuse, child-rearing styles, identity formation, the influence of peer pressure, gender issues and a number of others. Among this plethora of developmental issues, this analysis will focus on three in particular: 1) the impact of abuse; 2) the impact of child-rearing styles; and 3) the impact of gender issues. Regardless of which issues one chooses to analyze from AngelouÆs early development process, the over-riding capability that comes to mind is resiliency. As Boyatzis (1992, p. 221) maintains, the book ôàcorresponds so well to work on resiliency, it seems as if Angelou read the research before writing her story.ö This analysis will examine abuse, child-rearing, and gender issues as portrayed in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in order to illustrate AngelouÆs development of resiliency despite an often harsh and abusive environment.
The impact of child abuse is readily evident in AngelouÆs account of her early developmental experiences. Angelou was sexually abused as a child by her motherÆs boyfriend. We see later, during adolescence, she describes herself as blundering around from one sexual experience to another. Lack of sexual education combined with sexual abuse in her early development created relationship problems and sexual intimacy difficulties for Angelou during adolescence. Howard Good (2002, p. 35) maintains that both the sexual abuse and even adolescent encounters of sex described by Angelou represent victimization, ôThere is nothing the least bit sexy about these chapters. They are presented in terms of violence and victimizationàI found them to be heartbreaking.ö
The impact of chi...