Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, an American Slave influenced I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Angelou's book belongs to the line Douglass opened and extends it to a Black girl's childhood, which the nineteenth century tradition largely had no room for. What carries over is the method: the abuses are narrated in plain detail and left to make their own case, and the redemptive turn is again literature. Angelou is brought out of years of elective mutism by being made to read poetry aloud, which is the literacy scene doing the same structural work it does in Douglass. The title comes from Dunbar, and the debt to Douglass is formal rather than quoted.