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“Ain’t I A Woman”: Exploring Femininities in Diaspora in Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

2013; Academy Publication; Volume: 3; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.4304/tpls.3.3.466-474

2053-0692

Sana Choudhry, Saiqa Imtiaz Asif,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

Angelou's autobiography I Know Why Caged Bird Sings is significant because it unveils the diasporic identities of Black American women, challenging the essentialist notions of "blackness" and "feminine".The representations of the women of color in the novel have been problematized because they were created on multiple axes of power.The present research focuses on unveiling these problematic representations, highlighting the subject and object positions taken by the women.The paper analyses the novel using Pessar and Mahler's model ( 2003), Gendered Geographies of Power, concluding that the femininities in diaspora are created as a result of various socially stratifying factors, such as race, class, State ideologies etc which are variable and ever changing.Furthermore, the identities of the colored women could be a result of individual choices.Diaspora as such, appears as a site of various cultures, which can both empower/disempower these women.When looked at in this way, the study critiques the idea of fixed, stable and monolithic identity for the colored women in diaspora and favors the Postmodern notions of identity for these women.