In her early years, Maya Angelou worked in New York nightclubs and toured the world performing in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess. She became a civil rights activist in the 1960s and worked as a journalist and teacher for five years in Africa. She is currently regarded as one of the best poets and authors in America. Her reconstruction of her own life in multiple volumes of autobiography is her best work. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of these, describes the challenges of her 1930s upbringing in the American Deep South. The young Maya is sent to live with her grandmother, who owns a store in a tiny town in Arkansas, along with her brother.
She gains a lot of knowledge from her grandma, but she also observes the town's pervasive racism and the casual animosity that white people feel against black people. Maya, who is just eight years old, is then sent to live with her mother in St. Louis, where her mother's current lover rapes her. Few people can get through to the girl because she retreats into her shell, mute with trauma and sorrow, and only her brother can. Maya is still in her adolescent and is currently residing permanently in San Francisco with her mother.
The first book of the autobiography concludes with the birth of her kid and her realization that new responsibilities need a new commitment to life. She becomes pregnant while still a high school student. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is worth reading and rereading because it poignantly recreates Maya Angelou's battle to create her own identity and overcome the challenges of being black and poor in a racist culture. It is a harsh condemnation of injustice, but it also offers encouragement that even the worst situations may be overcome.
Knowledge is power...