Maya Angelou’s I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
“The caged bird sings with a fearful trill,
of things unknown, but longed for still,
and his tune is heard on the distant hill,
for the caged bird sings of freedom.”
I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, the first of a seven-volume series of memoirs, presents the autobiographical coming-of-age story of Maya Angelou, the late renowned author and poet. Beginning at the age of three, the book follows Angelou through her young life, ending when she becomes a mother at the age of 16.
Angelou’s memoir is the happy result of a challenge from her mentor, James Baldwin, and editor, Robert Loomis, to write an autobiography that also read as a piece of literature. Baldwin encouraged Loomis to be persistent with Angelou, who originally refused his offer to work with her on a book. Loomis is reported to have enticed Angelou with a well-worded dare: “It’s just as well,” he allegedly told her, “because to write an autobiography as literature is just about impossible.”
The book opens when Angelou and her brother, Bailey, are abandoned by their parents and sent to live with their grandmother, Momma, and uncle, Willie. This sense of abandonment is carried by the two children throughout the volume, who are treated as baggage by both their family and by society at large.
Angelou faces constant, daily racism at the hands of the white community around her. The continued verbal abuse and physical neglect of the community that surrounds her sets the tone for a slow but important personal evolution, from a young victim of racial trauma to a self-confident woman capable of encountering, addressing, and conquering the prejudice that surrounds her.
Perhaps a more overwhelming presence in the memoir is the sexual abuse of Angelou, at a mere eight-years-old, by her mother’s boyfriend. Only presented briefly in the text, the results on a young Angelou permeate through the majority of the text’s following chapters, as she withdraws from those around her and, to an extent, loses her voice. In this way, rape is seemingly used as a metaphor for Angelou’s parallel suffering at the hands of racism.
The memoir expertly and artfully explores racism, trauma, and depth of character, delving deep into the topics of independence, identity, self-determination, and personal dignity without reservation. Nothing about Caged Bird overtly paints a picture of happiness, nor is it easy to read, but the lack of social and personal ambiguity in Angelou’s work is what opens the door for a strong portrayal of her evolution into a self-empowered black woman.
Herself like the bird struggling in its cage, Angelou writes openly and candidly about the oppression on the basis of race, gender, and social status at the hands of fellow humans. Caught in the midst of the civil rights movement, Angelou “writes like a song,” according to The New York Times Book Review, just like the bird who sings of freedom.