I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

A tough but necessary read.

Hit me like a ton of bricks. I was never assigned this in school and didn’t know anything of Angelou’s early life. What a work of art, a memoir that reads like fiction, striking and considered.

Upon completing my reading of this book, I found myself pondering the idea of legacy. Perhaps it was because the author recently died, or perhaps it was just my analysis of her popularity as an author and a person. To be honest, although her autobiographies are more celebrated, I enjoy Angelou's poetry much more. To me, her poetry breathes humanity, passionate and powerful. While I find her story in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings engaging and important, I did not enjoy her prose. The four-star review is for the way she presents the honest point of view of a young black female growing up in the early 20th century America. I learned from her experience, and I believe I better understand America today as a result of learning her experience and culture. At the end of the book, I wanted to know more about her, which is not a reaction I anticipated as I was reading. As a side note, I saw some reviews here on Goodreads that indicated that some parents do not want their children exposed to the content in this book. As a parent, I understand the need to protect your child and I agree that children need guidance and protection. However, I also believe that by high school, children are no longer children. They are young adults and they need to learn how to navigate this messy world without mommy and daddy making the decisions for them. We all want a better world for our kids, but that means giving better kids to the world, kids who can think critically and use their powers for good. They need a certain amount of exposure to the world (as well as guidance) to do that. Angelou's life is inspirational not because she had bad parents or because she had an amazing grandmother, but because she took all of her experiences and crafted her life into something phenomenal. My wish is that we and our children would do the same.

A classic in American literature, one I first read years ago as a freshman in high school. I remember appreciating it then, but thinking it was a bit boring (a 14-year-old's opinion, on a book being taught in high school English class). Re-reading gave me a much better appreciation of it, and of Angelou as a writer. 

The story meanders a bit, but ultimately heads us in a single direction. And during that meandering Angelou shows us what an exceptional writer she is and her ability to write different styles of story. (One of the chapters is basically a ghost story.)

As I got towards the end of the book, I began to see what 14-year-old me was thinking, in that it slows down a bit, and it took me a while to get through the last 100 pages. But overall a really good book by an American icon.

I understand the importance of this book, but it just wasn't for me and I was getting through it so long

Wow... I’ve never come across writing as descriptive and original as this. It’s been years since I have read a biography that’s a page turner. Angelou is a gift.

I really enjoy this book and I am glad I got to listen to Maya as she read about her story.

Truly heartbreaking at some points listening to the life she lived. Honestly speechless that this is how some humans still treat others. All I think about how this wasn’t that long ago and how relevant these stories are today.

This book provides a unique insight not only into Maya as a person, but a unique look into life as a southern black woman in the midst of some of the biggest racial upheavals in our nation’s history. Riveting and beautiful are understatements!

Heart-wrenching, beautiful, and inspiring. Great on paper and as an audiobook.

** spoiler alert ** I don't normally read autobiography book because most of the book gives only facts, life events and I don't like the monotonous tone. But in this book, Angelou's unwavering tone and her descriptiveness capture the reader and making you understand what it is like to be a black girl in 1970. (descriptive) - "In cotton-picking time the late afternoons revealed the harshness of Black Southern life, which in the early morning had been softened by nature's blessing of grogginess, forgetfulness and the soft lamplight." - "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. A black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful." Throughout her life, Angelou had dealt with child rapist, violence, abuse and racism. She was only 8 or 9 when she was raped by her stepfather and the man was murder soon later. But she got this victim guilt that she allowed herself to mute and not communicate with other. If she did, she thought that person might also got murdered. The life of African American was complicated, tiresome, and full of violence when you think about other people that involved in her life. Also she pointed out the strict and uneducated background of her church community specifically and overall of her race such as her Momma thought saying "by the way' is a sin so that she was beaten harshly by her. The Racism was so complete in Stamps where she spent her childhood compared to San Francisco or in Mexico around that time. This book gives me such an inspiration that the girl who had dealt with a lot in her life finds life something to be worth living; her brother (Bailey) her books, and her first born son. You could've end your life and give up with everything but Angelou, even when she doesn't have anything, she wasn't trodden and still find love and bonding. People who have impacted her life include her teacher, Mrs. Flower who help her to try speak up again and another teacher, Miss Kirwin who love teaching and sharing information and treated all the students fairly. I have discovered that in friendship and relationship if you don't have mutual respect and trustworthiness, you should get out of that well immediately. Unlike from any other book that beg you to feel so emotional and pretentious, this book gives the genuine voice coming from Angelou. "She comprehend the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies joy." "Life is going to give you what you just put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray and you wait." "Just as gratefulness was confused in my mind with love, so possession became mixed up with motherhood. I had a baby. He was beautiful and mine."

I had to read this book for a class on women, gender, and ethnicity, discussing the intersectional discrimination that Maya Angelou faces in her early life. Already knowing that the subject matter was going to be difficult to get through in terms of seeing someone suffer for things about them that they can't change, it was a surprisingly enjoyable read. I appreciated how individual chapters were set up as vignettes of Angelou's life, each allowing the reader to take away from the book what they wanted.

Five stars!

While this book was not my favorite, I am glad that I read it. If nothing else, at least it's off my To Read list.

I feel like it's unfair to rate an autobiography, especially one that focuses so heavily on racism. Luckily I have good things to say about this one. Angelou keeps you emotionally engaged in her past self. It's pretty well-written, but really the best part is that it's pretty intimate and tender. Angelou definitely had struggles in life, and, knowing she overcame them, we can safely read her accounts now.

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness." p. 201 Having recently primarily limited myself to works of fiction (to which I can thank the reading fatigue from 18 years of school), I'll admit that I struggled with this memoir for a while. I'm glad this book can serve as my entrance into the beautiful world of memoirs. This this book is enlightening and depressing and humorous and monumental. Angelou's writing is truly beautiful. On one hand, I do think this is a valuable read for anyone, and could truly be eye-opening for many. On the other, I recognize that I got so much more out of this because I chose to read it myself (or, at least, with my book club) than I would have if it'd been assigned as a school reading.

LOVED this book.

This was a very beautiful, very slow book in which a great deal of things happen. It's perfect for a slow day, or a night when one's having trouble sleeping. The only work I've ever read by Maya Angelou before is "Phenomenal Woman." I think I'm going to read a few more, because she crafts her words with such honesty.

This had been on my reading list for a long while and my company's book club finally brought it to the top. I had a hard time getting through it as I found myself not too fond of her writing style. My only negative feeling was towards the ending. Seemed rather abrupt and cut short. Content Warnings: Rape, Racism

2.5 stars, actually. This book just wasn’t what I expected. I found it somewhat boring and the story seemed to lack direction. Perhaps it just wasn’t for me...

so powerful

This has been in my TBR for a while now and I finally got around to reading it last month. . . I put it off because I knew that there were some traumatic events Maya Angelou went through and are told in this book. . . I really felt like this book was written as though a child was telling the story rather than an adult looking back which was a new experience and honestly made the terrible parts less anxious for me to read. They weren’t as graphic as I had feared and used more child like words and descriptions which did not lesson the terribleness of it but made allowed me to read, understand and continue with the book. . I have a very hard time reading about things like the events in the book but I’m glad I was able to read this important book. It gave a big insight into 1940s America and I really feel like I gained something from this book. .

** spoiler alert ** This was a reread for me but it's been over 10 years since I first read it and that made it like a fresh book for me. This is the first of Maya Angelou's memoirs and recalls her life from early childhood to the birth of her child. This memoir contains stories of trauma and joy and family and what it was like to grow up predominantly in the south as a black woman in the 30s and 40s. I think the story about her graduation is particularly interesting and important to understanding her and her classmates' experience with education during this time.

One of the problems of African American literature is that the men pretend the women don't exist and the women normally write, quite understandably, about how all whites and black men oppresses them. This does not result in bad works, but books by male writers annoy women and books by women are considered "Women's Literature", because a woman's experience is always considered exceptional. In any case, this is an excellent book about what it meant to be black, in the States, in the thirties. Angelou writes mostly about her own life, but the way she weaves in the lives of her relatives is one of the most interesting protrayals of the life of a minority I've ever read. The language is beautiful without being too flowery. The structure is mostly episodic, which style books would frown upon, but is there any other way to tell the experiences of chilhood? It seems outdated because it's almost forty years old, but this is the place to start if someone wants to know more about African American history through literature and biography.

This one hits HARD. My first encounter with Maya Angelou's writing and I shall be coming back for more. They told me this was sad and THEY WERE RIGHT but it was also really nice, can't say any more.