Maya Angelou and Alice Walker Analytical Essay by JPWrite

This paper explains that female African-American writers Alice Walker in "The Color Purple" and Maya Angelou in "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" use the horrors of the African-American experience to draw attention to racial prejudice, injustice and sexism making their protagonists struggle for their independence and their indignity. The author points out that in "The Color Purple", Walker, telling the story in diary form in a series of letters to God and between the sisters, uses a rape scene on the first page to draw her readers into the story. The paper relates that Angelou's work, written in a more formal style, is based on her real life experiences, which makes "Caged Bird" much more disturbing than "The Color Purple".