Why The Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou is a leader by example, she sets the standard by her actions and the stories she tells teaches the audience a lesson. Majority of her work is to inform us of the past and she wants us to learn from her experiences in life; she is a life teacher. The purpose of this poem was to inform us of the history of our country. The poem is titled “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings” and her purpose of writing this is to teach the reader why the caged bird sings. Maya Angelou wants to put the reader in her shoes to get the ultimate experience of racial inequality but instead by taking the role of a caged bird or a free bird.

Maya Angelou tells of her life experiences and struggles in her book “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” that gives us insight about Maya’s life as a young black girl growing up in a time of racism. The novel discusses various forms of oppression that she had to face as well cope with them. Robert A. Gross wrote an analysis for Newsweek about the book and claimed that Angelou’s book is not only an interesting story of her own experience, but also a portrayal of a Southern black community, thus being a historic reference of the 1930’s. Joanne Megna-Wallace backs up Gross’s claim in her critique of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” and also stresses the importance of the novel as a historic book, and also discusses how Maya Angelou intended the autobiography to target the historic circumstances of the time period. However, these two analyses portray the novel in two completely different ways. Robert Gross views the novel as a well-written story that was cleverly thought out and racism has a slight impact on the main character’s life. He views the autobiography as being a beautiful story that portrays the warmth and understanding within the black community, whereas Wallace argues that Maya Angelou’s autobiography is way of exposing the horrific racist conditions that made up her childhood. She focuses on Maya Angelou’s struggle and the tragic events that made her the woman she is.

African Americans living in the south face a lot of hate and prejudice. The civil rights movement improved the lives of many blacks. Maya Angelou in her memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, uncovers the racism that blacks face and how Maya begins to think she is less equal that whites.

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However, Maya, the viewpoint of the novel, as a woman who hasn't lived this TRUE American life style. Like said, “In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn't really, absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different. To be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well-dressed. I remember never believing that whites were really real. ” (Angelou, 25) Maya illustrates the quantity of racial discrimination between the white and the blacks. That the segregation was in a sense said “complete” and never had the black seen the whites. Maya is once told in the novel that she was “the Uglies” and had told Bailey that was actually a beautiful blonde hair and she was in a nightmare trapped in this “African American” body. This act by Maya really says her individual characteristics that she is equal upon all American, and is not to be look down upon. In a sense, American isn't supposed to be a point to be judged upon racial features, but an individual who wants to strive and succeed for greater

Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is an emotional coming of age autobiography set in the nineteen thirties – forties, focusing on her struggle with self-acceptance, insecurities, and prejudices. This journey is vastly explored throughout the United States such as, Arkansas, St. Louis, California, and even outside of the U.S. like Mexico. She travels with her brother to visit different members of their family, with each location having a story to tell. When she is three years old, she and her brother, Bailey, are sent to stamps with their grandmother after their parents got divorced. Notoriously in the South, segregation and racism is omnipresent. Here Maya is brought up by “Mama”, her grandmother. The siblings understandably feel abandoned by their parents after realizing they weren’t dead like they’d coaxed themselves to believe.

Firstly, the most difficult and largest cage Maya faces throughout, “I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings”, is racism. Maya is living in Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmpther in a rather black community. Whites come in and out of they’re family business store and torture Maya, and her family begins to notice that they bother her. Racism becomes to effect Maya and create a cage around her. In Chapter 1, Maya states, “I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, and turned me into a big too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that could fit a pencil,” (3). This scene reveals how Maya feels about who she and how she views herself as a human being. Maya wishes that she was a little white girl, but knows who she actually

She reflects on the segregation in her small town, and what her life was like as a child. At this point in Maya’s life, she sees “whitefolks” (25) as something that she isn’t sure exist. She didn’t know what they looked like, and they didn’t live in her world on her side of town, so they weren’t considered people to her. Maya understood what other people were telling her, especially that people on the other side of town were something to dread because they had all of the power in the segregated world, and African Americans had none

The novel, I Know Why the Cage Bird Sings, is a touching story. It is mainly about a young woman named Maya and it is about her life. Maya isn’t like other girls. She grew up much different that most people; for instance, instead of growing up with her birth mother she has been raised by Momma Henderson. Momma Henderson is Maya’s paternal grandmother. Maya and her brother, Bailey, were sent to Momma Henderson when they were young. She might have well been there birth mother because she was there more often for them, than, their actual birth mother. Maya had an extremely difficult life and her ties with Momma Henderson, Bailey, and her birth mother altogether played an important role in her upbringing.

Over the summer, I chose I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou as my choice book. After finishing the book, and reflecting on it for some time, I have decided that my favorite character in this book is Vivian Baxter, otherwise known as Mother Dear. Being the elusive mother of Marguerite, more commonly referred to as Maya, and Bailey Jr. in the first bit of the book, she finally appears suddenly into their lives, and becomes a complex character that I can strongly connect to. Along with being drop dead gorgeous, Vivian is a strong willed, do-it-yourself kind of woman. She provides well for herself, along with Maya and Bailey, even though she is a black woman in a racist and sexist era, but she still manages to make a good living, and a reputation for herself. Vivian is

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings I Know why the Caged Bird Sings is an autobiography by Maya Angelou about her childhood and adolescent life in the 1930s, and how she struggles to find her identity amidst the harsh realities of living as an African American. Angelou is shifted between a quiet, dull life in Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother and brother Bailey, and bustling city life in St. Louis and California with her mother. Angelou utilizes an evolving theme of resistance to racism through motifs of strong black women, and personal anecdotes. The motif of strong black women paired with vivid exaggerations, emphasizes how the women in Angelous life gradually inspired her to resist racial injustice.

Many struggle with the concept of growing up. Some struggle with school work others with social status or making friends. These problems can be narrowed down to one thing that is the most important thing to have while growing up. Not friends, not perfect grades, not the newest car, but confidence. Confidence allows one to excel of what you are good at, but when you sit back and doubt yourself you will never make it to where you dream of being.

The first four chapters to me were informative. I like how they explained where they came from. A part that stood out to me was in chapter one Bailey and Maya called their grandma momma. I did not understand until I figure out they were living with their grandma and uncle. I think that they see her as a mom because they are going to be living there for a while. I think that their parents couldn’t take care of them at that moment so they were sent to their grandma’s house

Maya told an interviewer that when she wrote I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings that she was always drunk and upset when she would write. She was miserable, but she needed to get it out instead of keeping everything that had happened inside of her. Critics now talk on how they think she is a liar. They think that everything she wrote and claimed was made up (Ramsey).

Near the end of the poem it is revealed that the bird “opens his throat to sing” Maya Angelou felt this way in her own life. She wrote, sang and danced because it was her way of expressing her longing for freedom despite being oppressed for most of her life. Although freedom, to the caged bird, is “fearful” because it is “unknown”, he still sings “a fearful trill”. The cries of help are heard but the overarching parents only hear it as background noise.