 According to Angelou, the book's title came from the rent parties of the 1920s and 1930s, where people would pay the host an inexpensive entry fee and then eat and drink throughout the weekend. As Angelou stated, people would "sing and swing and get merry like Christmas so one would have some fuel with which to live the rest of the week". These parties, also called "parlor socials", were attended by members of the working class who were unable to afford to go to Harlem's more expensive clubs. As critic Mary Jane Lupton stated, "The concept of the rent party helps describe Angelou's position ... She is a single mother from the South who goes to California and sings and swings for a living. She entertains others for little money as a singer, B-girl, and dancer, without getting very merry at all". Scholar Sondra O'Neale described the phrase as "a folkloric title symbolic of the author's long-deserved ascent to success and fulfillment".
