ABSTRACT
Maya Angelou's autobiographical writing must be seen as an adding to the clamorous voices of her ancestors who had survived to bear witness to that experience, and which testify to their claims for attention as oppressed women possessed of colossal will. Angelou writes within an established black autobiographic tradition, which she employs to give a positive female image. She also feminises what had been an immensely popular white male tradition in late nineteenth-century American writing. The substance of her autobiographies is provided by Angelou's search for her black female self. Angelou's evaluation of her life encounters is a positive one in that she seizes upon negative experiences as learning opportunities. Life, in her evocation of it, is something to be surmounted, and racism something to be recognised and resisted. The appeal of Angelou's writing for women readers who are neither black nor American is in her creation of a positive female role model.
