i know why the caged bird sings book cover

Seeing these things through the eyes of ignorance made them more painful when there are no heroes swooping in, no redeeming, climatic moments. And I found that both that scene and the later chapters dealing with her sexuality to be more brutal because she was so uninformed and confused through all of it, abandoned, neglected. But the section about Angelou’s rape by a boyfriend of her mother’s is pretty rough. Racism is a large part of why this book exists, so that would really only recommend it to a lot of people. This one! There is (graphic) child rape in it, teen sex and sexuality, abuse, racism (duh), and even some lightly-mentioned murder and assault.

I like the idea of giving trigger warnings for some books. Angelou could have done some fancy flash-forwards or leaned heavy on unimportant facts early on or something, but it turns out she was ahead of her time as it was, breaking ground as a story-teller in her day and age and for her gender and race and any number of other things. I suppose, nowadays, we would demand more of our memoirists/autobiographers, perhaps because there are so many of them and we have so many talented and educated people with a laptop and a story, out there. And the surprise twist at the end that lacked foreshadowing and any context from earlier? Well, that’s how it went down. It’s really uneven, but how else would it be? Her life from age three to age sixteen was really uneven. It moves in fits and lurches, which is probably how Angelou’s memory functions and also how she managed to glean the important bits from her early story. It’s autobiography, which is why it has some plot and continuity issues (not in factuality, but in flow). I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings might be her most-read work, a memoir first in the series and chronologically covering from birth to age sixteen. Her work has inspired and educated millions of people around the world, largely through her poetry and her series of memoirs about growing up Black in America through the twentieth century and sometimes poor and sometimes abused or neglected. In short, she’s one of the most famous authors of several generations and had a varied career from civil rights activist to poet to Broadway singer. Nonetheless, I eulogized her HERE, so if you are curious about her, that would be a good place to read a few paragraphs about her life and work. I can’t imagine the vast majority of you are not familiar with Maya Angelou and her work.

Punch line: I am not going to include it in the curriculum, though I would recommend the book. I was really hoping this one would stick, even though it’s a touch longer than I would be including, ideally. If you’re new here, then you alone are not sick of hearing this: I was reading I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in order to write a curriculum for ninth grade homeschoolers in a class I am teaching this year.

I know why the caged bird sings book cover