I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
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Book Summary Information
Author: Maya AngelouEdition: Mass Market Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1983-05-01
ISBN: 0553279378
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Book Review: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Book Review
Summary: 4 Stars
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
By Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou had a very interesting life. I chose to read this book because I saw the movie Beauty Shop and heard a lot of her sayings. I was intrigued by them and wanted to learn more about who she was. There were many troubles in her life, but she dealt with them just fine.
There were many important events in her life. Some were happy and some were miserable. When she was little, her parents got divorced and she and her brother had to live with their grandmother. Their grandmother was very religious and strict. Maya learned to respect god, others, and herself, and she also learned proper manners. But when Maya was about seven years old, her father lived with her, her brother, her grandmother, and her uncle until he could take them to see their mother. "How are you going to feel seeing your mother? Going to be happy?" He was asking Bailey (pg. 48).
Maya and her brother, Bailey, were in St. Louis with their mother, their other uncles, and their other grandmother. After a while, Mother got a boyfriend named Mr. Freeman. He seemed nice and quiet but Maya found out about him the hard way. He raped her several times when she was eight. When Mother found out, she took him to court. Maya had to testify, but Mr. Freeman was released before he could serve his time in jail. "Marguerite, answer the question. Did the accused touch you before the occasion on which you claimed that he raped you (pg. 71)?" He was found dead the next morning in the street. Mother decided that she wanted Bailey and Maya to be away from all of that madness. They moved back to Stamps, Arkansas with their grandmother.
When they moved back, Maya would not talk at all. "The only thing I could do was to stop talking to people other than Bailey (pg. 73). She felt miserable and alone and just wanted to die. But she lived through it and started talking to people again. She made a best friend, had a crush, and even graduated from eighth grade. Maya got was only thirteen when she got her diploma from preparatory school. She was an extremely smart student and got moved up a grade. Then she had to go live with her mother again. But Mother moved to San Francisco, California. She did great in school and had wonderful grades by the end of the year. During the summer, she went to live with her father and his girlfriend, Dolores, by the border of Mexico. That was when more trouble started brewing.
One morning, when she was fifteen, her father decided to take her to Mexico with him to get some ingredients for dinner - he was a chef. They left Dolores at home and drove to the border. He and the guard knew each other and were drinking together. When he finally drove off across the border, he drunkenly told the guard he cold marry Maya (in fluent Spanish). "Dad still had the bottle but it was only half full. He asked the guard if he would like to marry me (pg.196)." They drove off to a bar and enjoyed a party there. Then Dad went off with his Mexican women and left Maya in the bar. When he got back, he was drunk and put in the back seat of the car. Maya drove him home. She got to the gate with out a scratch on the car, even though she didn't know how to drive. The guard let her through but once she got going, she crashed into the car that was on the other side of the gate. Dad was woken up and he explained what was happening. They accepted his apologies and he drove back to his trailer.
When they got there, Dolores was waiting inside on the couch in the same place where she was when they left. Maya went to her room but could hear the two of them fighting. Dad left and went to his neighbor's trailer. Maya went into the room where Dolores was to try to comfort her, but Dolores called her mother a whore - that was the last straw for Maya. She slapped Dolores across the face. Dolores then grabbed her and slashed her waist. Maya ran to safety in her dad's truck while Dad's crazy girlfriend was screaming and chasing after her with a hammer. Dad came out of his neighbor's, calmed his girlfriend down, and checked up on Maya. At first he yelled at her, but then realized she was bleeding terribly. "His hand showed red in the porch's cast-off light. `What is this Marguerite?' I said with a coldness that would have done him proud, `I've been cut.' (pg.210)" He then took her took his friend's house. His wife was a nurse and she fixed Maya up with a big band-aid. Dad then took Maya too another friends trailer for her to stay the night there. He checked on her the next morning but then left again. Maya packed food and decided that she didn't want to be with her father anymore, so she stepped outside and began her junkyard journey.
Maya chose an old junkyard that didn't look tended to or bothered. She chose the best and most comfortable car that was there to sleep in. The next morning eyes were peering in on her from the windows. They were kids her age. Their leader laid down some basic rules and let her stay for a month. They always entered in dance contests to earn money. She and her partner actually won. Finally, Maya decided to go live with her mother again. "I telephoned mother (her voice reminded me of another world) and asked her to send for me (pg. 216)."
When she got back to San Francisco, everything had changed. Bailey was with a group of slick street boys and learned how to use slang words. He also moved out on his own, and Maya missed him a lot. Maya thought that she seemed a lot older. She even got a job. It was hard for her because she was black, but she kept trying and she got it. "I was given blood tests, aptitude tests, physical coordination tests, and Rorschachs, then on a blissful day I was hired as the first Negro on the San Francisco streetcars (pg.229)." She also did well in school and read a lot. But, one day she started to read a book about Lesbians.
Maya started to wonder whether she was a lesbian because she hadn't developed yet, even though she was sixteen. She chose to find out if she was straight or not. So, she had sex with a boy that lived up the street from her. A while after, she was feeling sick and realized that she was pregnant. Maya didn't tell Mother or her new stepfather, Daddy Clidell, that she was going to have a baby until three weeks before she was due. Maya only told Bailey and the boy. The boy stopped speaking to her. She had a son right after she got her high school diploma - she was a few years ahead. When she saw him, she was afraid to hold him and drop him, but still loved him. "Just as gratefulness was confused in my mind with love, so possession became mixed up with motherhood. I had a baby. He was beautiful and mine (pg. 245)."
Maya Angelou learned a lot about herself. She learned how ignorant she was when she was little and how aware she became when she was grown. She learned that people and the world can be cruel sometimes. But she knows now that you have to stand up for your rights, be strong, be observant, and deal with all of the misfortunes that come your way. Most importantly, she knows that you should deal with your troubles and try to survive.
By S.R.S.(Bear)
Summary of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A phenomenal #1 bestseller that has appeared on the New York Times bestseller list for nearly three years, this memoir traces Maya Angelou's childhood in a small, rural community during the 1930s. Filled with images and recollections that point to the dignity and courage of black men and women, Angelou paints a sometimes disquieting, but always affecting picture of the people?and the times?that touched her life.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."
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