The first of five autobiographical works, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, focuses on the recollections and adult understanding of Maya Angelou's growing up female and black in the America of the 1930s and 1940s. The author begins this volume with a description of her young self standing in front of the church to deliver a short poem on Easter. Although she describes herself as very dark and ugly with "steel wool" for hair, here she imagines that someday her true self will emerge. She'll be blonde, blue-eyed, and white.
The first chapter proper, however, shows us three-year-old Marguente (Maya) and her four-year-old brother Bailey arriving by train to live with their father's mother, Mrs. Annie Henderson, in Stamps, Arkansas. The children's parents have ended their marriage and sent the young children.....
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