I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
by Maya Angelou
|
List Price: Our Price: $4.75 You Save: $2.24 (32%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $0.01 (click here) Category: Book See more book details and other editions |
|---|
Book Reviews of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Book Review: A Review of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
Summary: 5 Stars
Albert Ellis once said, "The art of love...is largely persistence" and in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by critically acclaimed Maya Angelou, persistence is exactly what young Maya intends to keep strong. The completely autobiographical memoir lures the reader in with its depiction of the lives of blacks in the Deep South during the Depression. Within the heart of rural Stamps, Arkansas little Maya and her brother Bailey are prisoners of the tight knit community and all that it brings. Along with their sacrilegious Grandmother, who is constantly in a fit in regards to any lack of obedience, Maya struggles to find her place. On the surface, she plays a character who genuinely enjoys living among her interesting quartet of a family, her Grandmother, her physically disabled Uncle Willie, and her true joy in life, Bailey are all she has in the world until her estranged father arrives to take Maya and Bailey to live with "Mother Dearest." The life of the big city entrances Maya and her imagination. While living with her mother, Maya receives an education, and meets all sorts of different people, one of those people being Mr. Freeman, Maya's mother's boyfriend. When Mr. Freeman takes advantage of eight year old Maya, it becomes clear that the children must be sent back home to their little town of Stamps.
For the rest of Maya's time in Stamps, she encounters all sorts of different types of people; people who will make a great impact in due time, and those who simply play a role in every day fun. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings portrays a great tale of a young girl's battle to suppress the boredom of country life and strive for a greater meaning to her existence while also dealing with the inevitable battles of growing up.
Maya Angelou's writing is flawless and each phrase is master crafted to perfection as she explores the truth of her childhood. "Looking through the years, I marvel that Saturday was my favorite day in the week. What pleasures could have been squeezed between the fanfolds of unending tasks? Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives." (113) The beauty of her words flow together in a magnificent mosaic of phrases and each step in this eloquent autobiography leaves a lingering sense of compassion in the reader's heart. The heart wrenching moments, though distressing, are overshadowed by the little joys Maya always seems to find. The way she confronts the temptations and urges throughout her teenage years are exposed in great detail as she takes little steps to achieve what she considers the "normality" of being a teenage girl.
I truly enjoyed this radiant and joyful story with its realistic balance of pain and pleasure. The reader will be forever mindful of this little girl's journey into adulthood, the quest for love, and the long standing clash with society.
Book Review: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
Summary: 4 Stars
This book is a well written book. It is written about the authors life as an african american child in the south. Maya Angelou and her brother Bailey where born of the african american race. They were sent to the south to live with there grandmother. I really liked this book because it was written very smoothly and did not jump from one topic to another topic. The way she structurally bulit her autobiography is very smoothly done. The book is very well thought out. The way she puts her life into a story that teenagers can understand is not very easily done, but she made it very understandable of how african americans were treated in that time. The way she developed her book was pretty empressive because she put everything the way it happened and did not go from one thing to the next without a good transition. She says in her book "Annie, tell Willie he better lay low tonight. A crazy nigger messed with a white lady today. Some of the boys'll be coming over here later" that quote shows everyone how the african american people where treated (3.18). That quote really hit me in the heart good because of the fact that the white folk does not know if it was Willie or not but they really do not care, they are still going to beat him up because he is african american.
I really liked the plot of this story because it is basically Maya Angelou's life. How she was treated when she was a child, and what she did as a child to pass time. There was not television or anything like that back in her days as a child. "After our early chores where done, while Uncle Willie or Momma minded the Store, we were free to play the children's games as long as er stayed within yelling distance". I like this quote because I think that that is the best way to past the time. Nowadays all the children do is watch televison to past the time. I think they should all think about how Maya had to make herself have fun to pass the time (4.22).
I think her character set up was well thought out also. I like how she used thier real name and not a cover up name like most people do. "When I was three and Bailey four, we had arrived in the musty little town, wearing tag on out wrists which instructed-"To Whom It May Concern"-that we were Marquerite and Bailey Johnaon Jr., from Long Beach California, wn foute to Stamps, Arkansas, c/o Mrs. Annie Henderson." Some authors write books on thier life but change their name because they do not want to let their audiances to know what happened to them. Maya Angelou is comfortable with her childhood even if she was mistreated and treated poorly. So I highly recommend you to read this book if you want to understand how african americans were treated.
Book Review: An adult review--and one teacher's viewpoint
Summary: 5 Stars
May I tell you why I choose to have my ninth grade students read it? I have noticed a lot of reviews by young people, which I applaud, but an adult perspective might be helpful. I don't particularly feel the need to defend its merits. (I am not articulate enough to do justice to that task.) As with any book, some will love it and some won't. Guaranteed, it will make you uncomfortable at times, because one chapter describes the rape of a young person--which is painful for any compassionate human being to hear. Plus, there are other sexual issues, largely stemming from the earlier assault, but also because she is a teenager in the last phase of the book. Such questions about love and sex are characteristic of the teenage years. Many young people, as well as adults, are confused about such topics. While these are generally the most controversial segments from the book, the fundamental lesson of the book goes far beyond the survival of one victim. I won't supply you with the answers as to what one should take away from the text. It is a personal experience for each of us.
We can all learn from Maya's honest account of her childhood journey. We can all try on her experiences and live vicariously through her for a while, and see how it changes our own perspective on what it means to be a human being.
I'll be the first to admit, this book is a challenge for all my students in one way or another. Some because they are white and live in the northern US. Some because they are male and it's difficult to view life through a woman's eyes. Some because of the adult vocabulary and extensive use of figurative language. Some of these experiences are so remote from their own, while others are very close to home. It helps them to see how much we actually do have in common with those who at first seem very different. They all can benefit from reading it, if they give it a chance. (Adults may be better equiped to appreciate fully this text. However, young people can take so much from it. Maybe one day, we can have an abridged version, so it is still rich in language and meaning, yet condensed so more young people can access its many gifts.)
Beyond the darkness of some of those experiences (discrimination, rape, humilation and fear) lies a powerful sense of hope, dignity, determination and resilience. One of my favorite aspects of the book is its emphasis on the power of education, language and literacy. Throughout Maya's life--books, poetry, impassioned voices have all inspired her. Her autobiography is a moving tribute to a literate way of life and an enduring legacy to that tradition.
Book Review: Age Inappropriate and More? Just Awful. Reverse Racism Too!
Summary: 1 Stars
First as to the Maya Angelou phenomenon:
Why did a former Methodist school, Wake Forest University allow a former prostitute/Madame to become a tenured Professor? Two words: African-American. Do you think Wake Forest would have hired The DC Madame or Marilyn Chambers (two white sex workers) to become a tenured professor? Heck No. There is a total double standard here. No former sex worker should be honored with a Professorship at a college or University.
Next to this Book Itself:
I am going to describe two books: One is "Playboy's Erotic Stories" and the other is "Why Does the Caged Bird Sing".
Book #1
1) Graphic details of child rape
2) Graphic details of author seducing another underaged minor into sex and descriptions of the actual sex that followed.
3) Permissive attitude toward Teen Pregnancy
Book #2
1) Graphic details of sex between adults
2) Graphic details of adult seducing another adult into sex.
Upon first glance, you would think Maya's book would be Book#2 because how could teen sex, unwanted teen pregnancy, and rape be in a book issued to 10th graders in Public Schools and made required reading.
In fact, her book is #1 above. I would almost prefer they allow the smut between consenting adults rather than her trash.
Her book does nothing to raise the bar in American Literature and should not be required reading at the 10th grade level in our country. These 10th graders are not old enough to watch an "R" rated movie but they can read about Maya seducing her 16 year friend into having unprotected sex and then getting pregnant and having to raise the child alone. No thank you former Sex Worker/Madame/University Professor. No wonder the unwanted child pregnancies are so high in this country. If they read Maya's novel they understand good can stem from something bad eventually and so they have more unprotected sex and have more welfare babies.
The Bottom Line: Speak to your PTA and Principal about this book and complain loudly if this is required reading at your school. Also, spread the word to other parents so they know about what this novel is about. Alot of parents don't take the time to question what the school assigns but we need to be vocal about this.
Book Review: Caged Bird: From Fear to Freedom
Summary: 5 Stars
Maya Angelou was born into a society that was as rigidly stratified as any other in the world. Sometimes this stratification is based on religion, or on ethnic caste, or as in the United States, on skin color. What most often happens is that the favored color takes certain things for granted: upward mobility is within reach, respect is expected, and laws are meant for all (of that color). The subordinate color learns the inverse. In I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, Maya, as a child, learns all that plus she conspires against herself and her color. She sees whiteness as a desirable trait, blackness as not. In fact, her early life in Stamps is one prolonged immersion in what she terms a 'black ugly dream.' To compound her dilemma, she faces gender discrimination. Boys on the black pecking order occupy a rung higher. Yet despite all this, Maya even manages to overcome the trauma of rape at the age of eight from a trusted family friend. What Maya takes out of this act of violation is her realization that the ogre of life can be shut down if she learns to shut herself down. For months afterwards, she is deliberately mute. Her silence screams volumes while her soul decides how to heal itself. Eventually, Maya finds solace in the way that all trod on underdogs do: by self-betterment. With the help of her brother Bailey and god-fearing family, Maya discovers that the key to her rebirth lies first in books, then later in extracting nuggets of wisdom from those books which she can apply to her life. The careful reader will surely note that even the very young Maya is exceptionally erudite and glib. This is more a function of the adult Maya structuring her memories enriched with a lifetime of learning from those memories than it is of a precocious child. The grown woman Maya Angelou is a superb writer who uses the traditional devices of figurative language, a sense of the power of the spoken word, and a wide ranging use of symbols, all of which add up to a story that never palls or drags. By the time the reader gets to the end, this reader can see that the journey of a little girl who made the rounds of a short life of physical and emotional bounces has learned from a book what that girl so painfully endured: that freedom can only be achieved if fear is first confronted then beaten down.