Maya Angelou I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Essay sample

Maya Angelou I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Essay
sample

Maya Angelou writes on her experience
living in Southern rural then in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the book is a
heartwarming yet tragic story of her life from birth to young adulthood. She
grew in unstable home environment, moving between her grandmother, father, and
mother with her brother Bailey. She was  sexually molested by her mother’s
boyfriend at the age of eight that made her shut off from the world and spoke
only to Bailey for years, until her teacher helped her come out of the silence
after which she moved to California. She says, “If growing up is painful
for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the
razor that threatens the throat” (Angelou pg 1-228).

Angelou is an aesthetically satisfying
autobiographer, presents vivid and realistic characters, and brings out the
attitudes of the Southern White towards the blacks; she has good memories of
the events. She begins with her early memories but later the events are not in
a chronological manner in order to bring unity to her themes. Angelou writes
like a song and likes truth, and demonstrates wisdom, rue, and humor in her
storytelling.

Angelou did not change facts about her
life, but fictionalized them in order to increase the impact of her massage.
She introduced techniques of characterization, theme development, and dialogue
and introduces the Maya character to bring out aspects of her story from the
perspective of a child. Fiction stories tap into emotions and have deep impact
on people; the stories create empathy for their characters and readers identify
with their struggles and frustrations.

The book is powerful and captivating,
with richly realized and complex characters; Angelou brings out racial
prejudice in America in 1930 and 1940s and the book help understand the plight
of African Americans. She says, “My race groaned. It was our people
falling. It was another lynching, yet another black man hanging on a tree. One
more woman ambushed and raped”. Angelou symbolizes black girls growing in
America; her rape description is overwhelming and represents suffering of the
blacks.
Angelou went from being a victim of racism and inferiority complex into
self-awareness, develops a sense of self-identity, responds to racism with
dignity, and shows the lives and identities of women in male dominated society.
She says, “The black female is assaulted in her tender age 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. The fact that the adult American Negro emerges a formidable character is
often met with amazement, distaste, and even belligerence.”

“A light shade had been pulled
between the Black community and all things white” shows the racist world that
Maya grew up in. She witnessed evil that was generally directed at black
women  and uses the metaphor of caged bird singing in midst of a struggle
to represent confinement as a result of oppression and racism, book contains a
sequence of lesson on how to resist oppression. Maya eventually broke the race
barrier, became the first black streetcar operator in San Francisco, and
assertively responded to her white employer and embraced racial identity and
shed off self-loathing.

 Angelou’s rape experience depicts
the suffering of African Americans and connects it to the theme of caged bird’s
death because Mr. Freeman who raped her told her to keep silent about the rape
or he would kill her brother, Friedman was later murdered. During the period of
self-imposed muteness after the rape, her teacher introduced her to writers and
this empowered her and taught her the power of words that led her to place
importance in literacy. She would retreat into books in times of crisis; this
helped build her foundation as a writer, she is a good storyteller and has good
oral heritage (Angelou pg1-228).

Reference

Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird
Sings. New York: Infobase Publishers, 1969. Electronic.

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