Black Female as the “Transient Woman”: Anzalduan and Bhabhaian Construction of Subjectivity in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

In her Female Subjectivity in African American Women’s Narratives of Enslavement: Beyond Borders (2009), Lynnette D. Myles conceptualizes Black female subjectivity as an intersubjective act that actively challenges and transforms oppositional views and fixed notions of identity and defines it as the “Transient Woman.” The Transient Woman is a fluid consciousness that moves— in and out, back and forth, —in in-between places toward subjectivity rupturing various forms of Otherness. It is not a close-ended paragon, but rather a beginning of a new consciousness with which the Black woman talks back to the stereotypical images—either sexless or wanton, evil, stubborn, hateful, dependent, and living for others—of Black womanhood prevalent in cultural imagination and textual presentation. By drawing on Anzaldúa’s concept of the “New Mestiza” consciousness and Bhabha’s theory of the “Third Space,” Myles posits that the Transient Woman embodies a new form of consciousness—one that empowers Black women to transform from unconscious objects to deliberate, and active forces within hegemonic society. This paper argues that in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), Maya Angelou presents self-consciousness as a developmental journey toward self-actualization, which begins in a state of unconsciousness and gradually evolves into a new, autonomous awareness. Furthermore, it contends that by navigating the challenges of identities within the Third Space and embracing a fluid, dynamic subjectivity, the autobiographical Maya emerges as the “Transient Woman.”