I know Why Caged Bird Sings

I know Why Caged Bird Sings

The world today with its racism, corruption, and discrimination, is lucky to have such an inspirational author as Maya Angelou. In her works of poetry, drama and memoir, she describes the imperfections and perversions of humanity, men, women, black, and white with an unrelenting and sometimes jarring candor. In her first autobiography, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", she describes her own experiences as a Black African American girl growing up in the deep south of Stamps, Arkansas. (Baldwin 1993) Women were unrepresented there until Cisneros's recent successes. Cisneros is able to bring her characters to life with her rich use of symbolism. If these seem like colorful characters, it is because Cisneros has intentionally painted them with the colors of her imagination to create a world that stands in contrast to the otherwise bleakness of her surroundings. Cisneros has broken a silence that has run long and deep which previous decades of racism, poverty and gender marginilization had suppressed.

On the other hand Maya Angelou a poet, an author, a play-write, an actress, a mother, a civil-rights activists, historian and most important a survivor. Perhaps Maya Angelou, award-winning author of many books is one of the most influential African Americans in American history. Maya was born on, April 4th, 1928 as Marguerite Johnson, in St. Louis Missouri. She was raised in Stamps Arkansas by her Grandmother Annie Henderson and her Uncle Willie. Stamps was a rural segregated community. However, it was tight knit between the African Americans. Maya grew up during a very difficult time period in American history.

James Baldwin illustrates the motivation he got from reading this book as follows: "Black, bitter and beautiful, she speaks of our survival... This testimony from a black sister marks the beginning of a new error in the minds and hearts of all black men and women...I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood when the people in books were more real than the people one saw everyday, had I found myself so moved...Her portrait is a biblical study of life in the midst of death."

Maya Angelou went through many impediments throughout her life including the separation of her parents at age three, the rape and molestation by her mother's live-in boyfriend, and the prejudices of her community.

Maya was just three years old when her parents got divorced. Her and her brother Bailey, who was four years old, were sent on a train with a porter to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson. Even though the porter abandons the children at Arizona, they made it safely to Stamps. Annie Henderson, whom the children begin to call "Momma" is one of the community's most respected ...