"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou, the book tells about a growing up black girl in the American south in the 1930s and 1940s. Maya struggles with her youth. Her life in Stamps, Arkansas with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother are turned over to the care of their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the three K, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.
             The main theme of the novel is Maya's struggle to survive and grow up in a complicated and harsh world. Maya is extremely young when she and her brother are sent from their parents' house to live with their grandmother and uncle in Stamps. Life in Stamps is not easy. Momma is a religious fundamentalist and harsh disciplinarian who does not know how to show her love to the children. There is also a great deal of prejudice against blacks in Stamps. Maya's life becomes even more of a struggle when she goes to live with her mother in California. The beautiful Vivian makes Maya feel more awkward than ever, she also has no idea how to mother the young Maya. Because of Vivian's lack of protectiveness, at the age of eight, Maya is raped by freeman who is Vivian's boyfriend. When Maya's uncles know about the rape, they beat him to death. After this, Maya is filled with guilt and shame. As a result, she becomes silence. Unable to handle her emotionally distraught child, Vivian sends Maya back to Stamps to live with Momma. In Arkansas, Maya finds that her color and her gender complicate her life, for she is treated as a low class citizen. To prove her worth, she buries herself in books and studies and graduates from middle school with honors. Momma ...