The poem contrasts the lives of two birds: one that is free to fly and soar through the skies, and another that is trapped in a cage, unable to pursue its desires. The caged bird sings of freedom ...

authored the international bestseller I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, worked alongside Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, and recited one of her poems at a US presidential inauguration.

Angelou, a poet and activist, was the first black woman to write and perform a poem at a presidential ... I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, about her childhood in the Deep South.