Steven Lombardo

Passing Down the Art Form of the Slave Narrative

From Douglass to Angelou

Comparing the Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass an American Slave to Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as first person autobiographies is an undertaking that leads to a great appreciation and admiration for both of the authors’ unique life experiences that were written in strikingly similar styles. Although Douglass lived a hundred years before Angelou, the two authors share the common burden of being African-American in the United States. That unifying burden bridges the hundred years gap to reveal that hardships endured by slaves spawned the development of cultural characteristics shared by African-Americans from the days of slavery through Angelou’s generation and beyond.

Many similarities can be observed in the writing styles of the classic slave narrative that Douglass helped popularize, and that Angelou inherited and adhered to in her writing. One of the shared experiences evident throughout both narratives is the voiceless and choiceless African-American who gains the strength to become sovereign through self-expression in his or her writing. Whereas Douglass wrote on behalf of slaves held in the South in an effort to bolster support for abolition, Angelou wrote on behalf of herself and the long-suffering African-Americans of her generation. Both wrote about the nontraditional family situations that were such an important part of the life education each acquired and the sense of community each enjoyed. Douglass and Angelou wrote about the core Christian faith that helped sustain African-Americans through the worst of times, even in the face of hypocritical religious whites that oppressed their race. Skin tone has massive ramifications for authority and legitimacy in America, and nowhere is this more evident than in the life stories of African-Americans from every generation. Both Douglass and Angelou wrote about their families’ particular skin tones, their own skin tones, and how that single trait had such a profound influence upon how they were viewed and treated among other African-Americans and by American society in general.

Angelou’s story began on her journey into the “segregated South” in exile from her family in the integrated west. Conversely, Douglass’ only dream one hundred years earlier was to escape the family that owned him in the slave South to find exile among strangers in the free North. Although the authors may seem to have led in opposite directions, their stories are remarkably similar when read within the context of the classic slave narrative pattern. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. wrote in the introduction to Signet’s Classic Slave Narratives compilation that it often seems authors of slave narratives “[…] were tracing from a shared pattern, and then cutting that pattern from similar pieces of cloth” (2). Although Angelou did not write a slave narrative by definition, it seems that she was adapting to the old pattern and then cutting it from a similar but newer piece of cloth in Caged Bird. Angelou appears to have written an autobiography of her life in the modern era while following the style of the classic slave narrative made popular by authors like Douglass.

Douglass’ story is one of the original texts that helped define the genre of the classic slave narrative, and of those narratives, Douglass’ is probably the most famous. Douglass began his autobiography, or narrative, with a descriptive explanation of his earliest childhood memories. Douglas, a former slave, had a most dire situation; he did not know how old he was and had no certain knowledge of who his father was other than to know the man was white and probably his master. Douglass explained that his not knowing his exact age was a common problem all slaves shared. This revelation indoctrinates the reader on the first page about the undignified lives slaves lived, and it is a gentle warning that Douglass has a sorrowful tale to tell. Douglass wrote that he was separated from his mother, as most slaves were before they were a year old, and consequently lost the chance to bond with the only known family he had.

Angelou began her autobiography in a similar fashion to Douglass’ Narrative. Angelou’s Caged Bird seems to be another bookmark in African-Americans’ evolutionary history of the hundred years since Douglass’ narrative left off in 1845. Although Angelou begins by describing “[…] the harshness of Black Southern life […]” during her childhood, she is describing a better South than the one Douglass wrote about (9). Angelou began with the earliest and most significant experience of her life in the opening pages. She wrote that she too had been separated from her parents, but she did know her age and who her parents were, and she was in the company of her brother, Bailey. Just as Douglass described the old slave women who were given the duty of raising slave children, Angelou’s grandmother would become her surrogate whom she and her brother affectionately called Momma.

A common theme throughout slave narratives, including Douglass’, is strong religious faith. Momma was a hard worker who owned her own store in Stamps, Arkansas, but as an African-American woman in the South she would in Douglass’ words “[…] invariably suffer greater hardships, and have more to contend with, than others” (341). Angelou wrote in the first chapter of Caged Bird that Momma always began her day with this telling prayer:

Our father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn’t allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the strait and narrow, and help me put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen. (7)

Even though Angelou was writing about life in the South one hundred years later than Douglass, Momma still had to ask God daily for help to keep from speaking her innermost thoughts; she had no choice or voice. Momma’s roles included religious teacher, and she lived her life by Christian beliefs that she passed on to Angelou and Bailey through her example.

Douglass wrote at length about religion in his Narrative. However, most of his descriptions were of Southern whites who justified the institution of slavery with Christianity. Sally Ferguson wrote in her article “Christian Violence in the Slave Narrative,” “[…] Douglass […] was especially adept at demonstrating how devote Christians used the theological concepts of original sin, blood sacrifice, and spiritual atonement to rationalize the moral contradictions and brutality that attended the practice of Christian slavery” (298). One of the most interesting and telling parts of his Narrative is the Appendix where Douglass reflected on his story and decided to clarify his position in respect to Christianity:

I love the pure, peaceable, and impartial Christianity of Christ: I therefore hate the corrupt, slave-holding, women-whipping, cradle-plundering, partial and hypocritical Christianity of this land. Indeed, I can see no reason, but the most deceitful one. For calling the religion of this land Christianity. (430)

The previous quotation is only a sample of the six-page explanation Douglass offered to assure his readers of his true Christian faith. A more complete testament to his and other slaves’ faith is the fact that he and other slaves maintained their religious faith in the face of hatred and enslavement by the very people that taught them the Christian religion.

Although Douglass knew very little about his family, he did describe his mother’s looks in detail: “She was the daughter of Isaac and Betsy Bailey, both colored, and quite dark. My mother was of a darker complexion than either my grandmother or grandfather” (340). Douglass did not mention any other information about his grandparents or much more about his mother, but their complexion was important enough to warrant description. Douglass continued by informing the reader that slaves whose masters were also their fathers suffered worse than ordinary slaves because the master’s wife despised the slave whose looks favored her husband, and the bastard mulatto was more likely to be sold off to dubious slave traders.

In Caged Bird Angelou also wrote about the skin tones of her family members at length. She described her maternal grandmother: “Grandmother Baxter was a quadroon or an octoroon, or in any case she was nearly white” (610). Angelou further wrote, “She was white (having no features that could even loosely be called Negroid) and he [Grandfather Baxter] was Black” (61). There is not much more mention of her grandparents in the book, which leads the reader to find the Baxter’s skin color may have possibly been their most noteworthy attribute to Angelou. Upon meeting her mother for the first time Angelou wrote that “[…] her fresh-butter color looked see-through clean” (60). Angelou goes into great detail throughout the rest of Caged Bird about her mother’s looks and personality, but it is clear that Mother Dear’s light skin color is of great importance to Angelou. The “[…] see-through clean […]” remark is the most illuminating because of the importance African-Americans seem to attach to skin tone and its implications of beauty and power that have endured since before Douglass’ time (60).

Gates wrote that the slave narrative became a mutual saga of all African-Americans at the time, and this feeling is present when reading Caged Bird as well. Angelou wrote from the perspective of all African-Americans in the context of telling her own particular story. Gates noted that few slaves could read or write so it was necessary for those who escaped to learn, write, and tell the world of the slaves’ collective plight. This feeling of a collective consciousness among slaves is apparent throughout the Douglass Narrative, and Angelou continued that tradition by writing for African-Americans of her generation in Caged Bird. Angelou even made specific reference to the collective nature of African-American society when she wrote the following explanation:

Hence the janitor who lives in one room but sports a robin’s-egg-blue Cadillac is not laughed at but admired, and the domestic who buys forty-dollar shoes is not criticized but is appreciated. We know that they have put to use their full mental and physical powers. Each single gain feeds into the gains of the body collective. (225)

Angelou articulated in that passage how the African-American community is rooted in a family atmosphere that values the group and family more than the individual. This seems to be the legacy of the life and times written about by Douglass in his Narrative articulated in the following excerpt:

It is impossible for me to describe my feelings as the time of my contemplated start drew near. I had a number of warm-hearted friends in Baltimore, - friends I loved almost as I did my life, - and the thought of being separated from them forever was painful beyond expression. It is my opinion that thousands would escape from slavery, who now remain, but for the strong cords of affection that bind them to their friends. The thought of leaving my friends was decidedly the most painful thought with which I had to contend. (421)

In a country that placed the highest value in white society on the individual, the slave felt paralyzed with fear at the thought of losing the only comfort he ever knew, the love and bond of friendship he shared with his fellow slaves. Slaves’ common struggle created and maintained a bond that African-Americans continue to share through the more modern, but sadly similar, struggles that Angelou wrote about.

Henry Gates wrote, “[…] almost half of the Afro-American literary tradition was created when its authors and their black readers were either slaves or former slaves” (3). Gates went on to note that the classic slave narratives were originally written to debunk the argument that slaves and former slaves could not and would never be able to write. The genre did not only expose that flawed argument, but it created a conduit through which the truth about the horrors of slavery flowed to the world outside of the Southern United States. Once that flow of information had been opened, there was no way to stop the swelling tide of discontent among slaves, abolitionists, and eventually the public in America and around the world about the institution of slavery in general. The very people who had been thought too primitive to voice disgruntlement and too incompetent to write about the torture they suffered, had exposed slavery for all of its inhumanity in a new and gripping literary style. The slave narrative has endured as a unique writing style for generations and is still evolving today. “Truth stranger than fiction” is a phrase that unfortunately can still be used to describe many of the hardships suffered by African-Americans in the modern era. What better way is there to share the unique hardships, lifestyles, communities, families, and bonds that hold the African-American community together than to follow the style of the classic slave narrative?

Fredrick Douglass did not write the first or last slave narrative, but his extraordinary writing talent and his superior command of the English language secured his narrative’s place as one of the most influential and widely read autobiographies of an American slave. Douglass concluded his narrative by writing: “Sincerely and earnestly hoping that this little book may do something toward throwing light on the American slave system, and hastening the glad day of deliverance to the millions of my brethren in bonds […] I subscribe myself, Fredrick Douglass” (436). There is no way Douglass could have known in 1845 how great an influence his “little book” would have, not only upon ending slavery, but by popularizing a writing style that would be copied by millions. Angelou was always an exceptional student who was captivated by literature and history and was keenly aware of the small degree of progress made by southern “black folks” since the time when Langston Hughes wrote his stories that she loved so much. As Hughes helped bridge the literary gap between Douglass’ time and her own, Angelou seems to contribute to the construction of a new span in the literary bridge of African-American storytellers by following her predecessors’ blueprint and writing her autobiography in an updated slave narrative style.

Douglass and Angelou included many reoccurring themes of minority literature in their writing. The voiceless and choiceless minority finding his or her voice through literacy, a focus on non-traditional extended families, a tight knit community, and solid Christian faith and values are all examples of minorities adapting and triumphing in the face of relentless torment. Without reading Douglass and Angelou within the context of all African-American writing, and more specifically and most importantly, within the context of the classic slave narrative style, one might not see the abundant similarities, but instead may focus on the subtle and historically insignificant differences. Ignoring or overlooking the corresponding relationship between these manuscripts would be to tragically miss the wonderful evolution of the classic slave narrative that is still developing in the modern era. 

Works Cited 

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Bantam, 1971.

Douglass, Fredrick. Narrative of the Life of Fredrick Douglass. 1845. The Classic Slave Narratives. Ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. et al. New York: Penguin, 2002. 323-436.

Ferguson, Sally Ann H. “Christian Violence in the Slave Narrative.” American Literature. Vol.68, Issue 2 (1996): 297-321.

Gates, Henry Louis. Introduction. The Classic Slave Narratives. New York: Penguin, 2002. 1-14.