Worth A Read Yes
Length 304
Quick Review A heartbreaking look into the formative years of one of America’s greatest poets and humans.
Mention Maya Angelou, most people know who she is and the eminence that name conveys. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is one of her most well known works, but I had never read it. Some of these great books, I’ve had a hard time making myself read because I know I’ll never be able to read it for the first time again, but I finally read this one.
Angelou wrote an incredible memoir about coming of age as a smart black girl in the segregated South, being tossed between family members, surviving trauma, and finding the resilience to keep going. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, speaks to being trapped. Trapped by racism, trapped by circumstance, trapped by trauma, trapped by family, trapped by any number of things. Angelou grew up under vastly different circumstances in a very different time, but I saw myself in her words. Angelou conveys the suffocation of being trapped by people’s perceptions and actions. It’s impossible not to ache for the little girl within the pages.
The words are incredible moving. Angelou has a way of describing simple, quotidian things in a magnificent way, “fans moved with the detachment of old men.” It’s beautiful in it’s relatability. The writing is incredible. Angelou was a poet, and her ability to play with words and paint pictures is on full display.
What spoke to me most was the shame and loneliness Angelou dealt with. She was abandoned repeatedly by her family depending on what suited their needs. After being raped as a young girl, she dealt with the shame, guilt, religious sorrow, and gaslighting alone. It’s a sad story, but it’s not a unique one.
She was born Marguerite Johnson. “After Bailey learned definitely that I was his sister, he refused to call me Marguerite, but rather addressed me each time as “Mya Sister,” and in later more articulate years, after the need for brevity had shortened the appellation to “My,” it was elaborated into “Maya.” The love between Bailey and Maya was apparent on every page. She took the name he gave her and wore it publically until the day she died.
It’s hard to write about iconic works like I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because they are so well known and talked about with so much reverence. I loved this touching memoir. It’s in the American canon for a reason.
Memorable Quotes
“Excitement is a drug, and people whose lives are filled with violence are always winding where the next “fix” is coming from.”
“The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.”
“It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.”
“He told me once that “all knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.””
“The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.”
bisous und обьятий,
RaeAnna
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Title: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Random House
Copyright: 1969
ISBN: 9780812980028