Review of Maya Angelou's "I Know why the Caged Bird Sings"

Review of Maya Angelou’s

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Reviewed by Dan McDonald

 

 

            Maya Angelou (1928-2014) was a recognized and respected author before she died last spring. She had been one of the few poets given the opportunity to read a poem at a presidential inauguration, which she did for the 1993 inauguration of President William Jefferson Clinton. Her book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a book now read in high schools across our nation. But when she passed away last year I had never read anything she had written. I had grown up when almost everything we read in literature classes were written by someone white either from North America or Europe. I had not read hardly anything by someone on the other side of town.

When Maya Angelou passed away, I read the words of respect and praise for her. I saw a few quotes that caused me to be more interested in the words she had written. I made a mental note to purchase one of the books she had written and begin reading it. A few weeks later I had not done so. I took a vacation to California in June. While I was waiting for a flight back from San Francisco I went into a bookstore. It was there that I picked up a copy of I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. It sat among my books to be read until February. I now know that I should have read this book years ago. I now know that Maya Angelou was a gift to us all. I know why the Caged Bird Sings is autobiographical, telling the story of how Maya Angelou grew up. It is the unique and powerful telling of some of the events and people who helped shape Maya Angelou.

            It is tempting for an old white man to feel that having read a book or two by black authors that he has gained insight into the black American experience. Maya Angelou's writing tells her story and some of the stories of people around her vividly. But I realize that it would be a mistake to read a book as if in reading a book you could understand a people or what it meant to grow up African-American in these United States. It would not be a credit to an author to imagine they could tell you the essence of growing up in America, rather it would be an underestimating of an entire people group to imagine that any one author could capture the whole of a peoples' essence or experience. But we do look to authors to give us a valid important perspective of a life within a community, and perhaps within a particular community. That is something this work does wonderfully well.

            Maya Angelou tells us the story of her growing up under the varied influences of a grandmother, a mother, and some mentors. She tells the story of growing up in varied settings at varied times in her life. Her story starts as a young girl riding a train to Stamps, Arkansas. This was where she began to grow up in the 1930's when life in her small town was segregated. Her grandmother was a religious woman and there were contributions to Maya's life that her grandmother made. A few years later she was reacquainted with her father and mother. She began to live with her mother in St. Louis. Eventually she moved back to Stamps with a deep wound, but then moved back to San Francisco once more with her mother. The backdrop of her life among the settings where she grew up helped give Maya Angelou a broader perspective from which to look at life. Her story drew upon a diverse background of settings and personalities.

            There were different perceptions about life, associated with each of the places she lived. In Stamps, a grandmother helped give her some grounding. A mentor helped transform Maya's life by reading the opening words of A Tale of Two Cities in a way in which Maya felt the magic of the author's words when read with passion. This served to make her look for more in everything she read, because she realized that her mentor had seen more in the books they had both read. In St. Louis, and San Francisco, Maya's mother gave Maya a broad independence, but showed her support of the things Maya dreamed about accomplishing. There were also painful places in Maya's experience of growing up.

            I think my favorite story in the book is the story of how Maya Angelou became the first black woman to employed by the trolley car company in San Francisco. It is a story of how when she told her mother that she wanted to work on the trolley cars in the blue suits like the gals on the trolley car, her mother had to inform her that the trolley car company did not employ blacks. Maya's natural response was that she would then have to become the first. Her mother, instead of encouraging her to go for something more obtainable felt that pursuing dreams were important. She encouraged Maya to try to plan how she might get the job she wanted. Maya went everyday to where one would apply to work on the trolley cars. After a few weeks of making a daily appearance, she became the first black woman to work in the blue suit on the trolley cars.

            Many other people have read this book. I am sure there are plenty of better written reviews of this book. Having read it, I am so happy to know hundreds of thousands of young people have read this book. I am glad they didn't wait until they were almost sixty years old to read it. I hope they understand that what they read was the compelling story of one who learned to overcome. It is the story of a human being who sometimes had her dignity taken away from her, but always came back proving that true dignity was within her despite the troubling hardships thrust upon her in life. This was a truly wonderful book that I hope continues to be read by millions whether as part of a school curriculum or as something worthwhile at whatever age or circumstances one read it in life.