In
this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya
Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment,
frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence.
Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in
Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional
woman and the tightly knit black community there. These
very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she
endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence
while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative
years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy
changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's
"gift for language and observation," this
"remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable
black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world
of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant."
I know Why the Caged Bird Sings
is one of the most interesting and inspiring books you
will ever read. This book is re-enacted in the reader's
mind of the childhood of a women named Maya Angelou.
This book discussed her struggles as a child and growing
up. Maya went through many rough times ever since she
was a little girl. This novel is an autobiography; this
book deals a lot with family morals along with self-morals
as well. It deals with some adult situations, for example
Maya was raped when she was just a very young girl.
Since she was raped she went through many emotional
problems to the point when she went mute and did not
speak to hardly anyone for many years. In I know Why
the Caged Bird Sings, the reader will learn that Maya
found her fate at an immature state of mind and by her
knowing that her life would be different and more difficult
than anybody else her age. She went through some other
really rough times that made her childhood even tougher
and painful but at the same time taught Maya to face
life's challenges head on.
This novel also talks about
the two different lifestyles that both she and her big
brother Bailey had to encounter. The lives that they
had to face in Arkansas with her grandmother and uncle
Willie and the life that she had with her mother in
St. Louis.
Even though she was not truly happy either place/life
being with her grandmother seemed to spark more joy
then a little bit in Maya's heart.
In
this excerpt, draw the student’s attention to how two
black women are described from a child’s point of view—Mrs.
Flowers, well-educated, refined, graceful, gentle and
gracious, a black woman who can compete with any rich
white folks in the town, and how Momma stands in contrast
with Mrs. Flowers.
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