On The Construciton Of Maya’s Identity In The Third Space In I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou’s first autobiographical work,I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is considered as her most representative contribution to African American literature.It is successful for not only its high literariness,but also its inspiring narration of the process of the author’s distinctive self-exploration and self-realization within the patriarchal and white-dominant society.The thesis analyzes the protagonist Maya’s quest of both her racial and gender identity through deploying the post-colonial theorist Homi Bhabha’s the Third Space theory which as a ramification of the theory of “hybridity” deconstructs the engrained dualism between the colonizer and the colonized by refusing any form of the unity or fixity.Maya as a southern black girl has witnessed and experienced the pervasive racial oppression and gender discrimination,which overwhelms her and prevents her from knowing and accepting her African American identity.While being stuck into the dilemma about the problem of self-affirmation,it is the Third Space that Maya constructs with her friends from multi-races and her beloved brother Bailey that saves her out of the troublesome situation.Ultimately,the communicative and negotiable space that books and literature open for Maya enables her to indeed understand and confidently welcome her distinctive racial and gender identity.The analysis of Maya’s construction of her personal identity provides the marginalized group and the people who are still suffering the racial and gender problems a successful instance which could probably enable them to come to terms with both themselves and also the complicated world.