i know why the caged bird sings full book

It makes sense now and it’s an absolutely perfect title. When he beats his bars and would be free īut a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,īut a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings – When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore, “The title of the book comes from the third stanza of poem ‘Sympathy’: I have to admit that I wasn’t too clear on why, exactly, the caged bird sings. I guess you could say that it stopped when her childhood ended, but there’s not much of a conclusion or a wrap up. I did feel like this book just kind of stopped. And when she meets some of the women who become her mentors, they are spots of hope also, encouraging us to reach out to those less fortunate than ourselves. There’s one scene at a picnic that stands out as a beautiful bright spot. Some sections left me feeling sickened by the casual cruelty of humanity, others left me infuriated for the same reason. There were parts that I had an unbelievably hard time reading, but by sharing them, Maya lets the world remember what segregation leads to, and even lets others who have shared some of her experiences know that they are not alone. She’s intelligent, she’s a reader, she’s a dreamer, but she has no prospects, simply because of the color of her skin. Maya, or Marguerite as she’s mostly called in the book, is a “tender-hearted” soul. Who am I to judge what someone has had the courage to put on display for all the world to read? They have generally lived through experiences that I don’t even want to think about. I occasionally run into this problem with memoirs. I’m having a hard time writing this review. Maya writes poignantly and heart-breakingly, but never with self-pity, about life as an African-American girl in a segregated South.

They live with their paternal grandmother for years. It picks up when she’s three and her brother is four and they’re being shipped from California to Arkansas–alone on a train. The first volume in Maya Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is not an easy read.

I know why the caged bird sings full book