Dr. Laura Delano

A Sociopoetic Study of Maya Angelou's Autobiographies: from Identification to Individuation: a Sociopoetic Study of Maya Angelou's Autobiographies Dr. Laura Delano

Among African American Women there is a strong community bonding and this solidarity becomes a platform of survival. Maya Angelou, a renowned contemporary African American Woman Writer has recorded her life in a series of six autobiographical volumes. Mikhail Bakhtin pronounces that any verbal discourse is a social phenomenon ? social throughout its entire range and in each and every of its factors, from the sound image to the furthest reaches of abstract meaning. This is why Sociological Poetics is a viable means for studying literary texts, especially Black American women?s autobiographical writings. The process of individuation of Maya traced through rigid\flexible deterministic positions of social existence, applying sociological theories of Goffman and Giddens, toward the ever-renewing dialogic authoring of her Self in the Bakhtinian mode, forms the core content of the book. It analyses how Maya?s responsive interaction with the ?Other?- which is everything in her environment - makes the process of individuation, dynamic and continuous.