A review by skersh68
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

emotional informative inspiring sad

5.0

 

The title I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings comes from the poem “Sympathy” by the African American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar. In the poem, he depicts a bird in a cage that sings a prayer in the hope that it will be freed. 

I Know Why the Caged Birds Sings is the 1969 autobiography of the writer and poet Maya Angelou. The book tells the life of Maya and her brother Bailey growing up in Stamps Arkansas, St. Louis, and in California. Maya and her brother were sent to live with her grandmother Annie Henderson when she was five years old after her mother and father split up. While living in Stamps with her grandmother and Uncle Willie. Maya had to learn how to deal with abandonment and the prejudice of the town’s Po white trash. While living in Stamps Maya fell in love with books. When Maya was eight years old, she and Bailey were sent to live with her mother in St. Louis. While there Maya experienced and went through things that a child shouldn’t have to go through at her age or any age.  During the midst of all her struggles as a child, she learned how to overcome them.