Seminar paper from the year 2004 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies - Literature, grade: 1,0 (A), University of Siegen, course: American Poetry, language: English, abstract: Maya Angelou is an African-American writer. Her people and their position in American society play an important part in her works. Much of her writing is based on personal experience, therefore her central topics are racism and the emancipation of black women in the USA.

This term paper analyses her poems "Equality" and "Caged bird", discussing the issues of racism and female emancipation in the context of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.