I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
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Book Reviews of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Book Review: An incredible book!
Summary: 5 Stars
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, was one of the most touching books that I have ever read in my fourteen years of life. While reading To Kill A Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, in my eighth grade English class, we were assigned to read an independent reading book on a similar topic."For the first semester, I was one of three black students in the school, and in that rarefied atmosphere I came to love my people more. Mornings as the streetcar traversed my ghetto I experienced a mixture of dread and trauma. I knew that all too soon we would be out of my familiar setting, and Blacks who were on the streetcar when I got on would all be gone and I alone would face forty blocks of neat streets, smooth lawns, white houses, and rich children." As a white female reader, I found Maya Angelou's views very interesting and different from what I had expected. Her point of view helped me to understand her and her feelings even more deeply than I already did. It also helped me to understand the contrast between the races at the time.
"I guess it ain't your fault if Uncle Atticus is a n----r-lover besides, but I'm here to tell you it certainly does mortify the rest of the family-" says one of the white main character's cousins in To Kill A Mockingbird.
Both books portray racism in America in the earlier part of the twentieth century and the great similarities and differences between the two races. One of the similarities in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and To Kill A Mockingbird was religion. Religion was a very large factor in both a white and black person's life in the two books. However, while religion was important to the different races, it was for very different reasons.
In the African-American community, God was someone to love and praise for his support, love, and care. Church offered a chance to become closer to God and to ask for his love, help, and forgiveness. It was also a place to embrace other people in the community and to help them, too. Unlike the white citizens, the blacks go to great lengths to be at a place of worship.
For example, in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, a black couple exhausted from an almost twelve-hour work day come into Maya Angelou's grandmother's store to buy food. That night at a church gathering, a young Maya elaborates on how she saw the same couple there with their children, full of energy and life as they prayed to God. Another example of love and support in a black church is in To Kill A Mockingbird. While a member of the black community, Tom Robinson, is on trial for a crime he didn't commit, the church members gather together to help him. They start an offering for Tom's wife and children to help support them while he is unable to work.
In the white community, church is considered to be more of a social experience. Even though in both books religion is widely discussed and referred to by the white characters, church isn't shown to have any great significance to an individual. Another difference between the two races is their different opinions of God. While the African-Americans love and praise God, the whites see God as an almighty power who one should fear.
In both books the Methodist, Presbyterian, and Catholic churches are mentioned, but they are only mentioned in reference to white people and their churches. In the black community there is only one church -- a Christian one. The white churchgoers felt it necessary to differentiate themselves from the rest of the community, even though they were all praying to the same God.
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is a wonderfully written book about the experiences of a young African-American woman growing up in a racist society. The reader grows up along with Maya Angelou as she is violated by close friends, betrayed by family, experiences racism, and learns to become independent. It is a wonderfully descriptive and captivating book that should be required to be read by all Americans.
Book Review: I know why the caged bird sings
Summary: 5 Stars
Book Review By Jillian CarrickGrowing up in a time of depression and racism, Maya Angelou's first autobiography narrates the struggles she coped with as a black child living in the south. Her first of many vivid memories in the opening of, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is when she is three years old and her brother Bailey four, and their parents send them by train to live with relatives in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya is formally raised in a proper and religious manner by her grandma Henderson (Momma) who serves as a role model for her because she triumphs in spite of her restrictions. While in Stamps, Maya encounters many insightful people who prepare her for prejudice, but help build her the confidence to succeed in a world lacking equality. She is taught that as long as she abides by the Lord and the rules of the bible, she will never be mislead. Maya Angelou, known as Marguerite Johnson in her early years, is able to clearly recapture her ambitious efforts through moving, tear-jerking tales of her life up until age sixteen. Throughout this dynamic, straightforward autobiography, Angelou provides a child's perspective on a repressive and challenging world of adults. She states, "The art of autobiography as a means for a writer is to go back to the past and recover through imagination and invention what has been lost" (Novels for Students; volume 2). In her first, and many say her best of a series of five autobiographies, Marguerite reveals the gruesome details of being raped at age eight by her mother's lover. She explains her perplexing fears after the incident, and how she refuses to speak much at all for five consecutive years believing that she was responsible for Mr. Freeman's death (the man who raped her) simply by speaking his name in court. Marguerite soon becomes aware of her expected place in society just by observing how her race is treated throughout her years of silence. As she tries to discover herself and recover her own voice she realizes how many closed doors she will face, and how it seems very few will ever open. Marguerite thinks, "It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense" (153). She begins to comprehend a reality that, "we were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous" (152). Maya Angelou's, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is not just any old book to pass the hours, but rather the true story of a miraculously distinguished woman who deserves to be remembered as an extraordinary human-being. This book is special in the way that it keeps your feelings and opinion racing while it simultaneously expands your culture. In addition, "This work also affords insights into the social and political tensions pervading the 1930's" (Gale literary databases document). I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings leaves you full of curiosity about the next fifty years of Maya Angelou's successful life which she doesn't entice us with until her following four sequels. With Marguerite's coming of age in this overwhelming autobiography, the reader senses a truth about her, and it becomes no challenge to understand her suffrage in an expanding country full of discrimination. Maya writes, "If growing up is painful for a Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat" (3).
Book Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Summary: 5 Stars
"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." The story of Maya Angelou's childhood, portrayed in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, truly sustains this notion. For two uncontrollable factors, her gender and race, Marguerite faces the burden of racial prejudice and sexual inferiority on a day to day basis. At the young age of four, on the separation of her parents, Maya and her brother Bailey are sent by train from Long Beach, California, to Stamps, Arkansas as "poor little motherless darlings" to be taken under the care of their grandmother, "Momma", and handicapped uncle, "Uncle Willie". During the years of the Great Depression, (through which they remain unaffected), Maya and Bailey enjoy the simplicity of childhood. They spend their days working in the family grocery store, attending their African American primary school, and basking in the joy of each others' company. But on returning to California at age seven, in order to see, for the first time, her long lost parents, Maya faces an abrupt realization of the imperfections of this world when her perfect image of her mother and father is shattered, and she is raped by her mother's boyfriend -destroying her sense of self-worth. Maya returns to Stamps only to be faced with racial prejudice. Under severe pain, she is refused service from a white dentist who would "rather stick [his] hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's," - further crumbling her self esteem, and leading her to believe that not only is she an African American woman, but an ugly, unworthy, inferior, human being. But through all of these and many more challenges Maya prevails. She permanently returns to her birth mother in California, where she becomes determined to make something of herself - resolute to succeed in her plans to become a "conductorette" - an occupation for which black people are "not accepted." "I WOULD HAVE THE JOB. I WOULD BE A CONDUCTORETTE AND SLING A FULL MONEY CHANGER FROM MY BELT. I WOULD," Maya reflects, proving her strong will against all odds. Through much struggle she gains her dream job, and eventually becomes the strong woman that she is today. Angelou describes her journey's successful conclusion as "an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors."
Angelou tells her inspiring story in such a way that the reader begins to mistake her autobiography for a lyrically-written novel. Each chapter beautifully shares an individual unique memory, each adding detail to Maya's voyage to maturity and plight in desire for love. Angelou is a descriptive writer who paints a clear portrait of each event. She provides laughter and tears, disabling the reader from putting her book down until it is finished. I truly enjoyed I Know why the Caged Bird Sings and believe that everyone should have the opportunity to learn and grow from Angelou's story at some point in his/her lifetime.
Book Review: Book Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Summary: 3 Stars
A narrative about overcoming the obstacles in one's life, Maya Angelou's memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, reflects on Maya's experiences as a child and teen and the racial discrimination she faces. The memoir is set in rural Arkansas, St. Louis, and San Francisco between the years of 1931 and 1944, At the age of three, Maya, along with her elder brother, Bailey, are sent to live with their grandmother in Arkansas, deep in the then segregated South, after their parents' marriage ends in divorce. Later, as a young adult, she and her brother are sent to live with their mother, both in St. Louis and in San Francisco. While growing up, Maya struggles with maturing into an adult, her parents divorce, rape, and pregnancy.
While living with her mother in St. Louis, Maya is raped by her mother's fifty-year-old boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, at the age of eight. Although this issue is briefly touched upon through the book, one can see it made a great impact on her life, as she refused to talk for several years. With the help of Mrs. Flowers, a woman living in her town in Arkansas, she finally did begin to speak again. Later, while living in San Francisco, Maya begins to fear herself to be a lesbian, and as a result of this belief, she has sex with a boy at sixteen in hopes of convincing herself she is not gay. Three weeks after having sex, Maya finds herself pregnant. She hid her pregnancy from her mother for a majority of her pregnancy term, and it was only with two weeks left in the pregnancy did she decide to tell her mother. Angelou only briefly touches on her pregnancy, as if it is an insignificant issue in her life; however, during the 1940's, society looked down upon single, unwed, teen mothers. Despite all the elements working against her, she continues to persevere, eventually becoming the first black female street car conductor in San Francisco while still in high school, despite the racial discrimination opposing her.
Although I wanted to connect to Maya Angelou's character because she is a female protagonist and much of the book takes place while she was a teenager, I was unable to. In Jeannette Walls's memoir, The Glass Castle, I was cheering for Jeannette to overcome her obstacles and achieve her goals in life, while I had little empathy for the issues Maya faced in her life. I found the language in the book relatively simple, but I was confused throughout the book, whether it was about character's ages, or the introduction of new characters. While reading, I would find myself needing to stop for a minute so I would be able to remember who a character was.
Maya Angelou expertly sums up her experiences as a child in the opening of the book when she states, "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat." Although I did not love this book, it is successful in portraying a young woman who clears many hurtles and champions her dreams.
Book Review: Why does the Caged Bird sing?
Summary: 5 Stars
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, by Maya Angelou, is one of those coming-of-age stories that everyone will probably read in their lives. I felt the need to read it because of this, and so I could read it sooner than later. The story is an autobiography written in a series of short chapters, each depicting an important memory or moment in her life. Some are random, others are long, and all are written with the skill of a great writer. At some points, however, I felt she over-simplified or over-dramatized a section. For example, in one chapter she talks about a Ms. Flowers, who she describes as "...the lady who threw me my first life line", and in about two chapters you never hear of her again. Another example is when she sleeps with a boy, and becomes pregnant, yet barely spends a paragraph detailing the whole pregnancy and labor. In general, I felt that this autobiography was an important thing to read, but it did not meet up to my expectations in regards to an engaging plot and story.
The first chapter starts when Maya is three years old and traveling with her four year old brother to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandparents. As the story evolves, in her mind and the reader's, it gets split into several sections: those parts when she is with her crippled uncle grandma in Arkansas, whom she calls Momma, and when she is on the other side of the country with one of her divorced parents, whom she calls father and mother. It tends to be that the more shocking things, such as getting raped by her mother's boyfriend at the age of eight, or driving from Mexico without a license, always tend to happen when she is with her parents, yet she still loves them, and the book ends when she is at her mother's house in San Francisco with her new baby at the age of sixteen.
While I think that this book was well written, I would not recommend it for young teens or young adults, because I did not find it especially suspenseful or plot-driven. It also felt like she ended the story at a turning point in her life, and instead of trying to describe that point she simply stopped; the ending seems very cut off and at an illogical place considering the circumstances. However, those who appreciate playful, blunt writing will likely find this book an amusing read, with moments of seriousness to catch you off guard and wonder what this woman must be like now. I feel that this was a worthwhile read, but if you are looking for an extremely engaging piece of literature, this might not be it. I might have appreciated it more had I been older, but this autobiography, written by a "...too-tall Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet, and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil" gave me valuable insight into racism and prejudice against African-Americans in recent times, and I think that it is worthwhile for everyone to read at least once.