“You shaking, Sister”: a Cultural Study of Fear in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
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Fear is ingrained in women’s experiences from an early age, particularly among Black girls, whose girlhood is significantly shaped by racialized gender bias. This contribution examines the role of socio-cultural norms affecting the expression of fear in Maya Angelou’s first memoir, I know why the caged bird sings (1969). On the basis of a cultural model of analysis created for this purpose, which integrates the agents, circumstances and norms of fear, it is noted that children in 1930s Black Southern society are unable to verbally articulate most of their fears. Shame and silence surround the expression of this emotion in the memoir, as an indicator of the emotional repression of society. It is evidenced that, through the study of early emotional experience of marginal perspectives, a hitherto underappreciated world of construction of emotion may be unveiled.
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