I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

10 Pages 2443 Words

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: Movie and Book

The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five
autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious
grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of
three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal
grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation,
violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux
Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.

Maya knows that to be black and female is to be faced with violence and violation. This is brought
into focus when she goes to live with her mother and is raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When
Maya is faced with this catastrophe, tells who did this to her, and the man is killed, she believes her
voice killed him. She withdraws into herself and vows never to speak again. Her mother feeling that
she has done everything in her power to make Maya talk, but can cannot reach her, sends Maya and
her brother back to Stamps. After Maya returns to Stamps and with the help of her Teacher-Ms.
Flowers she begins to speak again.

The culmination of the novel is when Maya describes her eighth grade graduation. Angelou, her
classmates, and parents listen to the condescending and racist manner in which the guest speaker
talks. After listening to his insults, Ma...