Tongjin Xue

This paper examines the narrative strategies in Maya Angelou’s fifth autobiography, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes, through the lens of classical narratology. Drawing upon Wayne C. Booth’s concept of the implied author and narrative voice, alongside Gérard Genette’s frameworks of focalization and narrative time, the analysis investigates how Angelou constructs her “roots-seeking” experience in Ghana during the early 1960s. The paper argues that Angelou employs deliberate narrative techniques—the temporal distance between experiencing and narrating selves, strategic shifts in focalization, and patterned manipulations of narrative time—to negotiate the complex relationship between African American identity and African heritage. Furthermore, engaging with Douglas Taylor’s scholarship on trauma and narrative limits, the study explores how the Kaeta market episode presents a moment where historical trauma exceeds conventional narration, requiring what might be termed “narrative beyond narrative.”

Maya Angelou; classical narratology; narrative voice; focalization; diaspora

[1] Angelou,Maya.All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.Random House,1986. [2] Booth,Wayne C.The Rhetoric of Fiction.2nd ed.,University of Chicago Press,1983. [3] Genette,Gérard.Narrative Discourse:An Essay in Method.Translated by Jane E.Lewin,Cornell UP,1980. [4] McPherson,Dolly A.Order out of Chaos:The Autobiographical Works of Maya Angelou.Peter Lang,1990. [5] Taylor,Douglas.“A History We Can Neither Accept nor Deny:Feeding and Purging the Spirits in Maya Angelou’s All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes.”Journal of African American Studies,vol.24,2020,pp.258–268.

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