Question

What does Maya Angelou mean when she says that Shakespeare was a black woman ?

Answer 1

Hello

She was speaking metaphorically, Maya reflected on the words of Shakespeare. She related his words of sorrow and pain to her past, as she had been hurt and abused as a child, as most people know she was mute from the age of 7 to 13, an experience she writes about in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. But Angelou's message was that there is more in poetry—and, by extension, all art—that unites than divides us. Not only can a long-dead, uber-white male writer like Shakespeare voice an experience so universal that it speaks truth to power for a poor black girl living in the Jim Crow American South.