Maya Angelou Constantly weaving the theme of motherhood into her literature, Maya Angelou creates both personal narratives and poems that the reader can identify with. His exploration of this universal theme lends itself to a very wide and diverse audience. Throughout Angelou's works, she allows her followers to witness her metamorphosis through different aspects of motherhood. Well-elaborated themes are always present in Angelou's works: self-acceptance, race, men, work, separation, sexuality and motherhood. However, Angelou uses the latter to provide “literary unity” (Lupton 7-8). Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 to Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson. After three years her parents divorced and both Maya and her older brother Bailey were sent to Stamps, Arkansas. Once in Stamps, the children were cared for by their paternal grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson (Neubauer 21). In her first book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou tells the story of her childhood. It also makes the reader keenly aware of his close bond with his grandmother. Stephen Butterfield says of CagedBird (in his Black Autobiography in America, 1974): "Continuity is achieved through the contact between mother and child, the sense of life begetting life happening automatically despite all the confusion, perhaps even because of it ." Annie Henderson is an independent, God-fearing woman whose company has managed Maya through many difficult times in her childhood. It is through Mrs. Henderson's values ​​of self-determination and personal dignity that Maya'sid...... middle of paper......York: Random House, 1972. Angelou, Maya. I know why the caged bird sings. New York: Random House, 1969. Angelou, Maya. Singing and swinging and getting merry like Christmas. New York: Random House, 1976. Lupton, Mary Jane. “Singing the Black Mother: Maya Angelou and Autobiographical Continuity.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol 77. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 1993. Neubauer, Carol E. “Maya Angelou: Self and a Song of Freedom in the Southern Tradition.” Contemporary Literary Criticism, vol 77. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 1993. Vermillion, Mary. “Reembodying the Self: Representations of Rape in “Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl” and “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.” Contemporary Literary Criticism. Detroit, MI: Gale Research Inc., 1993.