Atlanta from the Ashes (The Phoenix) Atlanta from the Ashes (The Phoenix) Atlanta from the Ashes, more commonly known as The Phoenix, is a bronze monument located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States, symbolizing Atlanta's rise from the ashes of the Civil War to become a world city. The sculpture, dedicated in 1969, depicts a woman being lifted from flames by a phoenix, in reference to the phoenix of Egyptian mythology that was consumed by fire and rose from the ashes, just as Atlanta rose from the ashes after the city's infrastructure was burned by William T. Sherman's Union Army during the Civil War. The female figure
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings unsettled life in "Caged Bird" suggests her sense of self "as perpetually in the process of becoming, of dying and being reborn, in all its ramifications". African-American literature scholar Dolly McPherson agrees, stating that Angelou creatively uses Christian mythology and theology to present the Biblical themes of death, regeneration, and rebirth. As Lauret indicates, Angelou and other female writers in the late 1960s and early 1970s used autobiography to reimagine ways of writing about women's lives and identities in a male-dominated society. Up until this time, Black women were not depicted realistically in African-American fiction and autobiography, meaning that Angelou