When Maya Angelou published the poem “Caged Bird” in 1983, nearly fifteen years had passed since the appearance of her similarly titled memoir of 1969, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The title of this memoir alludes to a poem by the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. In that poem, titled “Sympathy,” he used the figure of the caged bird to symbolize the troubling conditions of Black life in America after emancipation. Writing nearly a century after Dunbar, Angelou returns to the figure of the caged bird to develop an extended metaphor about the ongoing inequity experienced by Black people in twentieth-century America. Angelou’s poem situates the caged bird in relationship to a free bird, who enjoys the blissful privilege of liberty. Whereas the free bird sails joyfully on the wind and eats as he pleases, the caged bird is physically confined and psychologically constrained. Unable to do anything else, the caged bird sings a song of sorrow and longing. Though the poem emphasizes the unfair plight of the caged bird, Angelou also draws on the lineage of African American spirituals to explore how art can serve as a resource for resilience in trying times.

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