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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.
