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Academic life narratives will probably never achieve the acclaim of the one that Frederick Douglass penned. However, they succeed well in showing that the impulse to creativity that grew out of the circumstances of those who were enslaved continues to define African Americans in twenty-first century narratives. “How I got over” is as legitimate a reason for exposing the self to public scrutiny as “How I escaped from slavery.” In both cases, the migrations in the lives of black Americans from one state of being to another had—and have—the power to influence generations of other aspiring African Americans. Transformation is the impetus to creativity, and those transformations are well worth the trips down memory lane.

Works Cited

Andrews, William L. “Autobiography.” The Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Ed. William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris. New York: Oxford, 1997. 34-37. Print.

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1970. Print.