I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou, who was born Marguerite Johnson, recounts her experiences as an African-American youth in the United States during the 1930's and 1940's. She candidly explores the complexities of racism, family life, and growing up. The thirty-six chapters of Angelou's 250-page autobiography are arranged chronologically and geographically, following Angelou and her brother, Bailey, from home to home.

Angelou sets the tone of the autobiography with a three-page vignette preceding the first chapter. She describes herself as a young child standing before a congregation in a church and reciting an Easter poem. She forgets her lines, becomes nervous, and flees the church. Angelou's flight from a traditional sanctuary, where she has found only discomfort, will be one of many flights.

In 1931, when Marguerite and Bailey Johnson began their moves, she was three and he was four. Their parents, on the verge of divorce, sent the children by train from Long Beach,

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Louis, Missouri, then back to Stamps, then to Los Angeles, and later to San Francisco. Angelou, just out of high school, lies in her bed, snuggled close to her three-week-old infant. With these sketches, the poetic voice of the author unifies an otherwise fragmented childhood. For example, in Momma's Store, the tired field workers gathered one evening to hear Louis fight Primo Carnera.

Although the sketches and the chronology hold I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings together, the strong, life-affirming voice of the author also unifies the autobiography.

Angelou desentimentalizes the image of African-American cotton pickers, shows the consolation of the religious revivals held at night in tents, and helps readers to understand the power of a symbol such as boxer Joe Louis, the Brown Bomber. Bailey ultimately joined the merchant marines. She makes her life--from age three through high-school graduation and the birth of her child shortly after--coherent by painting in words the world that she knew. They lived with Momma and Uncle Willie, with their mother and her boyfriend, with their maternal grandmother, with their father and his girlfriend, and finally with their mother and their new stepfather. California, to the home of the children's paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson (Momma), who ran the Wm. Just as the book begins with a child, reciting a half-remembered Easter poem, it ends with a child. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree.

Approximate Word count = 670
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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