I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

My daughter needed this for a book report and of course she was under the gun to get it done on time--amazon to the rescue! it arrived overnight and the book report was not late --thx!!

I never had the chance to read Maya's book and have been told many times that it is a very heart-felt story. Not only that she was such a deep Poet, writer, and so much more. There was so emotion it was raw, riveting, sad, and powerful all in one. Everyone has a story and I'm glad I finally had a chance to read for myself. Such an amazing woman phenomenal she is and her spirit lives on. An extraordinary gift she had and her brilliant words, to be a rainbow in someone's cloud as triumphant as that is leaves it left a footprint all around the walls of our hearts forever.

I bought it for my book club. It is a really great read.

I resist reading anything critics "tell me" to read since I don't always agree with their taste. Same for movies. I really enjoyed reading about black culture. Thank you so much for sharing. When I lived in the group home I used to watch the girls put the steel comb in the fire so they could do each other's hair before school. They also used a certain hair product they called grease. I'm still learning about the Black culture as much as I can. Not trying to get in anyone's business. I live studying different cultures that I'm interested in. And I'm beginning to learn what history I wasn't taught in school. I think history should be taught as it happened not " white washed" to make some look good. Thank you for sharing your life for all to read. Thank you for writing. I enjoyed your book. I'm just sorry it took all these years to read it.

I absolutely loved this book! It was as if the words were being sung to me. It took me to a place and time from a perspective I would never know. I highly recommend.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is , for lack of a better word, poignant. Maya Angelou shows us that life is exactly as wonderful or terrible as you decide it is.I may be the only one who never realized until I started reading that this book was an autobiography, so it truly was not what I expected at all. I knew of Maya Angelou's poetry and essays but had not read any of her prose until this. As a child raised in the South, I identified with much of what is spoken about. I was shocked speechless in other moments.I marvel at the circumstances that Maya Angelou navigated to become the remarkable human being she was. She proved there is nothing you cannot overcome to achieve your goals, except death. Where there is life, there is hope. With hope and determination, anything is possible.I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is painfully honest, inspiring, and gorgeously written. It should not be missed by any person who truly seeks the essence of living a full life.

I enjoyed this book as Margarite shared her life. I was appalled at what she went through and suffered with her as told the trauma of rape, insecurity due to bouncing around to different households and fears of growing up as a black child. Interesting how she was educated in school and by caregivers and her own self discovery. The book seemed to end abruptly however after her sons birth.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, is a Memoir by Maya Angelou. Like my book, The Real Wakandas of Africa, this book discusses racism in America. The book brilliantly engages the reader with the kind yet honest voice of the author as you experience her life from a child to African American icon. Her memoir is brutally honest and will grip you as you turn through its pages. This book is also available in audio format and were read by Maya Angelou. While she was alive, I had the pleasure of hearing her speak. Her cadence will grab you. Her words will make you think, and you will walk away a different person from this book. I can personally say that after hearing her speak, I was inspired to write some of my first conscious poetry which I continue today in podcast form. She will take you on a journey through her childhood and her life as a poet. Like this book, I also discuss racism in my book The Real Wakandas of Africa. However, I detail the beauty of African history before slavery and colonialism. Prior to slavery and European colonialism Africans built the tallest building in the world which stood as the tallest building for more than 4000 years. Africans performed surgery on the eye to remove cataracts 700 years ago, and conducted cesarean sections in Central Africa with antiseptics hundreds of years before they were performed in Europe or America. They smelted carbon steel 2000 years before Americans or Europeans knew about this process. In the field of astronomy, they charted star systems for hundreds of years before they were uncovered by American telescopes. Africans also built the longest wall in the world for which I also wrote a book called: The Great Wall of Africa: The Empire of Benin’s 10,000 Mile Long Wall. Unfortunately, this history has been ignored by books that discuss racism, and the exclusion of this contributes to the misunderstanding of Black history. Maya Angelou inspired me to in so many ways. She has inspired me to become a poet and author. Her book will keep you engaged and on the edge of your seat! Pick up your copy of her book today!

Rating: 4 starsCategory: MemoirSynopsis: ‘Memoir’ seems far too simple a word to describe I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya Angelou, a writer and civil rights activist (among numerous other careers) recounts her childhood experiences growing up first with her grandmother in the poor, isolated small-town Stamps and later with her mother in the lively glamour of San Francisco. However, she also relates these experiences into much wider issues from oppression to women’s sexuality. Someone asked me what the book is about and I found it so hard to summarise – it is a kaleidoscope of social exploration, perception, complex relationships, powerful moments and wisdom.Review:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was my first experience of reading a memoir and I had my doubts… after all, don’t we read fiction to escape from real life? However, I was immediately engrossed by the combination of Maya Angelou’s compelling voice and the incredible variety and depth of her experiences. Her story comes close to covering the entire spectrum of human emotion; it leads readers through the horrifying, funny then achingly sad in a relatively short space of time.Its almost lyrical style means the memoir reads almost like fiction and I had to keep reminding myself of its reality. In fact, Maya Angelou is credited with redefining the boundaries of autobiography, intending to ‘write an autobiography as literature.’There is a thoughtful beauty in her writing, with so many words of wisdom that I had dozens of highlights on my Kindle and found it very difficult to pick just one favourite quote! However, I think the true poignancy of this memoir lies as much in the words she does not use."she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well. She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima. The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve. He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there."It is understood that powerful moments such as this need no further commentary. Instead, they are allowed to speak for themselves.Also, the approach taken to portraying the complex relationships in the book is very much one of interwoven moments rather than a monologue. No attempt is made to simplify or explain these relationships; to do so would be to reduce them, and detract from the way in which the memoir explores the true nature of human connections. I was particularly fascinated by Maya’s relationship with her mother and grandmother, as well as the influence these two starkly different women had on her life.Something about the book, other than its genre, felt strange and different when I first started reading it. It took me a while to put my finger on it, but then I realised that I have not read a book from a child’s perspective for a very long time (since Room by Emma Donoghue). I always enjoy the immediacy of reading from children’s viewpoints, so focused on present experience, but I found young Maya’s unique, intensely observant view of the world especially captivating.However, I also relished watching her child’s perspective mature throughout the book as she ages. With the progress of the story, Maya begins to challenge, as well as observe, the nature of our world. I felt privileged to read about the experiences of such an extraordinary woman, who has had a truly extraordinary life.Favourite quote: “See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing. If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”

The subject - a black woman brought up in the Deep South surrounded by bigotry and poverty - touches themes all too familiar to many but it is the writer's treatment of the material, thoughtful, measured, often amusing and never self-indulgent, communicated through the medium of a remarkably rich style of writing, which leaves the reader with a much deeper understanding of all the players involved at the time. In addition to the author there are some very memorable women, in particular Angelou's grandmother and her mother, the remarkable Vivian Baxter. The men, apart from her brother, Bailey, are lesser, more peripheral beings on the whole.The writer writes of attitudes within the black community of which she is very gently critical, again in a thoughtful, completely unjudgemental way, and in that same, very muted, tone warns against victim complexes being sometimes unhelpful. Equality is about all being equal, having the same rights and opportunities, whether white or black, not vengeance for appalling ignorance, racist attitudes and shocking behaviour. This is a book written with great humanity and great dignity.

Maya Angelou’s autobiography was written really well. It didn’t feel like I was reading an autobiography at all, more like a fiction novel because it was so enjoyable to follow even though it covers some very important and slightly graphic topics.This book addresses issue of molestation, rape and racism and it does this through the trials of Maya growing up. It does talk about these issue in quite a direct way, but it’s not so graphic where it would be uncomfortable to read. However, even if uncomfortable, this book would be very educative for everyone and mostly adolescents.This book, I’m sure, isn’t intended to be a form of education. It’s an autobiography of Mayas life, what she went through as a child, which we could use as a form of learning. You need to however bear in mind that not everyone will find this book enjoyable. It’s not fiction, it’s real life. I enjoyed Mayas writing and learning about her life was an added learning bonus, that I find is very vital. I work with adolescents and I could easily take this into my work to make them more aware of these issues.Maya (aged 3) was sent to her grandmother, along with her brother Bailey (aged 4) to Stamps, Arkansas. From Reading I found that Maya’s grandmother was a privileged Black person, as privileged as any Black person could be. However, her grandmother had a very strict and old-fashioned way of living. Maya was well educated and so was her brother. They went to good schools and was top of their classes.Maya hardly knew her parents, and honestly I found them to be quite irresponsible. At age 8, Mayas father turned up to take her and Bailey to their Mothers, where they will be staying along with her Mothers lover. As the synopsis states, Maya was soon raped by her Mothers lover, however Maya seemed to not understand this at first. Who would at the age of 8. It was quite uncomfortable for me to read, I don’t regret it though.‘He said, “Just stay right here, Ritie, I ain’t gonna hurt you.” I wasn’t afraid, a little apprehensive, maybe, but not afraid. Of course I knew that lots of people did ‘it’ and that they used their ‘things’ to accomplish the deed, but no one I knew had ever done it to anybody. Mr. Freeman pulled me to him, and put his hand between my legs.’He done it again after that. I was furious with the situation, still am, as anyone would be.You know considering how privileged her grandmother is in Stamps and how she selflessly helps out the White people, she is still under appreciated as a Black person. No matter how much she would help a white person, the colour of her skin alway set her apart. Like a situation where Maya had a toothache and the only dentist she could be taken to was the White one in Stamps. The White dentist said;‘I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a n*****’s.’Mayas badass Momma took care of him though, an rightly so. I would love a grandmother like her.I would highly recommend this book, an so would Barack Obama, President Bill Clinton and Oprah Winfrey. So there is no excuse. Phenomenal writing and a vital learning experience

It's sad that even now, someone like me born so many years later, can totally identify with Maya growing up as a black female. Still hoping for the best, preparing for the worst so that nothing surprises us.

I read this book many years ago whilst a teenager myself and loved it. I fell upon it again completely by accident and read it in a day and a half. It was better this time round as I have so much more understanding of the struggles, fights and hardness of life. I also recognise the sheer wonderment of the good things in life too. Her passions and loyalties, betrayals and endeavours are all told in a heart warming heart wrenching book that all should read or be studied at school like mice and men or to kill a mocking bird.