I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Post by: Hannah Morris

With my interest and admiration for Maya Angelou, I decided to read one of her very early works titled I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. I decided to read this not only because it was one of her first published books, but because it was also the first in her autobiographical works. I wanted to know about the experiences in her life and what helped shaped her in the woman she is today and her views of the world.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings was published in 1970 and is probably one of Angelou's most successful and acclaimed works of writing (http://mayaangelou.com/bio/). It is told in first person from Angelou's point of view and tells in great detail, the events and experiences that Angelou went through from the age of 3 to about 16. The book discusses ideas of racism, gender discrimination, beauty, the relationship between children and parents, sexuality, child abuse, motherhood, and one's own path in life.

While the book contains numerous ideas and themes, racial segregation and oppression are probably the largest two of the themes in the novel. Being a young black girl in the south (specifically Stamp, Arkansas) Maya Angelou experienced racial discrimination a lot. She described the segregation being so complete, that most black children didn't know what "whitefolk" looked like (p. 25). There are many instances in Maya Angelou's life that I read about in the novel where she experienced discrimination and felt the oppression. I will only discuss two that I found terrible and shocking.

The first one is when Maya Angelou is graduating from 8th grade in Stamps, Arkansas. She was the 2nd in her class and was very excited to be graduating. A white man came and gave a speech at her graduation, and as he spoke, he mainly discussed how African Americans were thought to only become athletes or servants. He didn't encourage the children to go too far in their education and only commemorated blacks that were athletes. Angelou and many others in the room were aware of how the man was saying that blacks had no way of moving up in the world and were only expected to do physical labor. Angelou describes her feelings as she listened to the speech: "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" (p. 180). She remembers hating the speech and the awful feelings that crept into her stomach. She knew the man was putting her whole race down and she didn't like it at all.

Another instance is when Angelou was about 13 and had a rotten tooth. The closest dentist was a white man on the white side of town. Angelou's grandmother takes her to the dentist, but when they arrive, he refuses to work on Angelou. He says it's against his policy and he goes so far as to say, "I'd rather stick my hand in a dog's mouth than in a nigger's" (p. 189). Angelou and her grandmother were then forced to take the train to another town to a black dentist that would work on Angelou.

These are only a few out of the many instances where Angelou experienced the intense racism and oppression that came with being African American. However, while she may have had experienced this oppression, she did not let it keep her down. She continued to work hard in school, and even became the first African American to work in the San Francisco streetcars (p. 169). She had to work quite hard to get that job and pushed and pushed until they finally hired her. And from reading her online biography, I saw that this woman did not just stop there, but continued to fight for what she really believed in and still does today.

As I read this novel, I saw some similarities between I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and other novels or articles I have read. One is The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, which also deals with racial discrimination and the social construct that whites are better than blacks. Maya Angelou dealt with many of the same struggles that the main character Pecola goes through, such as being looked down by white people and her ugliness that stems from the idea that white is beautiful and black is not. In fact, Angelou's novel opens up with a segment about wanting to be white, and look like the girls with blonde hair and blue eyes. Other works it reminded me of were Anger and Tenderness by Adrienne Rich and Audre Lorde's Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response. The anger and frustrations Maya Angelou felt seemed similar to the feelings of Adrienne Rich's feelings about being a woman and mother; both were frustrated with the limitations and social expectations that society had placed upon them, with Angelou only being expected to be a quiet, complacent black woman that serves, and Rich having to be the stay at home mom. Then, in Lorde's article, she discusses how she did her best to teach her children that oppression comes in many forms, but it has nothing to do with self-worth (Lorde 75). I saw this lesson being displayed by Maya Angelou herself. While Angelou did have to struggle with being oppressed and lack of self-worth, she continued to push forward and try to beat the system, proving to them that they were wrong.

Maya Angelou really deserves to be recognized for her strength, courage, and willingness to fight for what she believes in. She is a woman that not only survived intense racial discrimination and oppression, but she worked to change it. She later went on to work with people like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcom X, traveling around to give speeches, writing novels and poems displaying her feelings and thoughts and not keeping quiet about her experiences (http://mayaangelou.com/bio/). This is a woman who found her voice even amongst all the cruel remarks, prejudice and oppression. She has even become someone I look up to and admire. My hope is that this simple fan page can get across this very important message: May Angelou is truly an amazing and admirable woman.

Citations:
Her Biography, source of pictures & website: http://mayaangelou.com/bio/

Streetcar picture came from: http://www.trolleystop.com/cablecar.htm

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1970. Print.

Lorde, Audre. Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist Response. 1979. Retrieved from d2l.arizona.edu. Web. 1 Apr. 2010

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. New York: Plume, 1994. Print.

Rich, Adrienne Cecile. “Anger and Tenderness”. Of Women Born; Motherhood as Experience and Institution (1976): 21-40. Web. 24 Feb. 2010