by Maya Angelou
(bio and other books)
As a child, Maya encounters the bruising effects of
racism and segregation in America. She lives in
Stamps, Arkansas, a town segregated to the point
that as a young girl, Maya isn’t sure that white
people even exist.
As she grows up, her confrontations with
racism become more blatant and more personal. For
instance, at her eighth grade graduation, a white
speaker talks to her in a condescending tone, her
white boss calls her Mary, knowing full-well her
name. And perhaps the most public example is when a
white dentist refuses to provide her service. Even
worse, Maya sees how well white girls are treated.
She begins to believe that the only way to be
treated well is to be beautiful and the only way to
be beautiful is to be a blonde-haired,
paled-skinned, blue-eyed darling girl.
This story is rich with character as Maya is
surrounded by those who live under the rules of the
South. The feelings portrayed are raw, and the
role of a child’s imagination is
poignant—magnificently done. She manages to
bring out aspects beyond those of a young girl's
private thoughts through real events like Joe
Louis’s world championship boxing match. A clear
victory for blacks in the eyes of the black
community, but an example of the white man's media failing to publicly recognized
an African American as a hero. Louis' victory also shows the desperate, lonely nature
of the black community’s hope for vindication.
Maya begins to learn
that she and her family are meant to be held back by
a fearful public. Limited in what they can do to
better themselves—demeaned for even trying. I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a story about the
pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society
and how profoundly such a society shapes the
character of an individual and the dynamics of a
family. It is a story of how one girl strived to
surmount such pressures.
Quote from
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“What
sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a
Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise? The
answer must be the experience shared between the
unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority
(you). All of childhood’s unanswered questions must
finally be passed back to the town and answered
there.”
buy
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
buy
Understanding I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,
by Joanne Megna Wallace
| 
