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A review by helendipietro
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
challenging
emotional
funny
reflective
sad
medium-paced
5.0
This book is written beautifully and disarmingly honest. I love the literary style of mixing an autobiography, memoir and literature altogether. I was fully immersed in Maya’s life and at times this was deeply unsettling as she courageously describes her early childhood trauma - I could feel the pain as I was reading. The language used throughout the book is beautiful, reminding me of the importance of conveying emotion and experience... “my old guilt came back to me like a much-missed friend”. “I was a loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor,”
The characters in her life were also given such depth. One moment I was raging at a character’s actions or words and the next I was laughing along with Maya’s sense of humour at a situation. As a teacher, I loved the way she described her favourite teacher and why that meant so much to her as she saw herself as “Black and therefore different.”
Finally, a quote that stayed with me was how she felt that being a Black woman disadvantaged her in 3 ways: “The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.“
I am now eager to read the next of Angelou’s autobiographies.
The characters in her life were also given such depth. One moment I was raging at a character’s actions or words and the next I was laughing along with Maya’s sense of humour at a situation. As a teacher, I loved the way she described her favourite teacher and why that meant so much to her as she saw herself as “Black and therefore different.”
Finally, a quote that stayed with me was how she felt that being a Black woman disadvantaged her in 3 ways: “The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.“
I am now eager to read the next of Angelou’s autobiographies.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Child abuse, Racism, Rape, and Sexual assault