I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou - 1969
Introduction
Maya Angelou's memoir I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was her first published full-length literary work. The book takes its title from a poem by Paul Laurence Dunbar titled "Sympathy," in which he expresses his feelings of imprisonment due to racial prejudice. Similarly, Angelou's detailed memoir recounts her early years and the hardships she faced as a young black girl in America. However, the book also documents many of her childhood joys, learning experiences, and accomplishments, as well as hardships that transcend race.
In the book, the author—known to her family as Marguerite—chronicles a period of her young life filled with displacement and a complete absence of any sense of belonging. She and her brother Bailey are shuffled back and forth among family members after their parents divorce, living most of their early years with their grandmother in Arkansas. From there, they are shipped off to St. Louis, then back to Arkansas, and finally they move out to California with their mother. The only real source of stability for the two siblings, separated by just a year in age, is each other.
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has attracted controversy in recent years for its chilling depiction of Marguerite's rape at the hands of one of her mother's boyfriends, Mr.
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