I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a memoir written by Maya Angelou. Published by Random House in 1969, this autobiography is 289 pages long. Maya Angelou’s first book focuses on her childhood growing up as a black women in the southern United States. The book starts off when Maya’s parents leave her and her brother Bailey with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. It then follows her through her teen years and end when Maya is sixteen years old and living in San Francisco with her mother. The novel tells of growing up from a young Maya’s point of view, where racial prejudice is a recurring theme. The autobiography opens in Arkansas where Maya’s grandmother owns the town’s only convenience store. The Store, as Maya called it, is on the African American side of Stamps, where workers picked cotton in nearby fields. This is where Maya Angelou lived and worked until she

Segregation was alive and well when Maya Angelou was growing up, and this is evident while reading the book. At one point Maya claims that Stamps was so divided, some black children didn't even know what white people looked like. Many examples of discrimination can be found within the novel. An example can be seen when Maya’s brother Bailey witnesses the body of a black man being found after he was murdered by a white man. Also, Maya had to go to an all black school where she received an education that she believed to be unsatisfactory to that of her white peers. Even though Maya Angelou wrote this book to entertain, the reader receives many informing insights into black life in the south.Maya Angelou was effective in presenting many motifs, such as racism and religion and self acceptance. Many examples of racial prejudice can be found throughout I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, and it correlates to a major theme that readers will take away from this