Effects of Racism on the Traumatic Experiences of Black Women: Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” in Focus

Abstract

This paper attempts to explore the effects of racism on sexual traumatic experiences of black women. Actually, the term racism incorporates negative brliefs about women and people belonging to third world countries. As it is suggested by Showalter (1986), Mohanty (2003), Spivak (1999) and Crowley (1991) that women are suffering from male prejdice and this male prejudice leads them towards mental trauma, in this situation, the racist attitudes of the white towards the black prove to be the prejudiceleading to last nail in the coffin. This paper seeks to explore the effects of racism on the traumatic experiences of women keeping in viewAngelou?s novel “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings”. The study is qualitative in nature and uses the framework of Post-Colonial Feminist writer Mohanty (2003) in order to analyze the text of the novel selected through purposive sampling technique. Moreover, the finding of the study revealed that the after-effects of both male prejudice and racism lead the black women towards resistance and courage against this process of „double colonializaation?. Through the framework of „Post-Colonial Feminism? many other issues such as displacement, segragation,sexual hes towards all women especially women of colour becauseheory approacharassment, rape and diaspora of non-western women besides the issue of identity crices can be explored by the future researchers.