Author: Maya Angelou, narrated by the author
Year published: 1969
Category: Adult nonfiction (memoir)
Pages: 304 pages
Rating: 4.5 out of 5
Location: (my 2025 Google Reading map): USA (AR, MO, CA), Mexico
Summary: Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right.
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Review: I read this book decades ago and am usually not a re-reader. However, the first week of October was Banned Books Week, and I (quite easily) convinced my in-person book group to read a banned book this month. They are not YA readers (most of the banned books are YA), so this one seemed a good choice.
Hearing Maya Angelou read her own words is a real treat. She sings the songs, hums the in-between bits, and "owns" the words. It helps me to see the events of the novel.
The novel does a wonderful job of painting a picture of Angelou's life growing in Stamps, Arkansas, St. Louis, Missouri, and California. Her life in her grandmother's house and general store are awash in religion, discipline, and southern social structure. She's the smart girl, the ugly girl (she was told this often), the awkward girl, the raped girl. As she gets into high school, life begins to look up with more friends, academic successes, and she grows into her looks.
Her brother is clearly a good and stable force in her life, even though we don't hear much from him. He is a constant for her, someone she knows will be there for her.
Life in California is so very different from Arkansas, spending time with her mother and her father (separately), a torturous trip to Mexico, sex for the first time, working on the San Francisco trolley cars, and more. There is still racism, sexism, and mistreatment, but Angelou faces it differently as she becomes a teenager, more confident in who she is and what she deserves in and from the world.
This memoir is well written, engaging, depressing, and uplifting, all at once.
Challenges for which this counts:
- Diversity--all characters are African American
- Literary Escapes--Mexico
- Nonfiction
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