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 I Know Why the Caged Bird SingsMaya Angelou (1970) Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is one of the most widely read books of the late twentieth century. The first of five volumes from the author's autobiography, it recounts a childhood marred by the presiding social structures of racism and sexual oppression. It also offers one of the most direct accounts of the rape of a young child. The narrative details the child's life with a fundamentalist grandmother in Arkansas and an overwhelmed mother in California, who fails to prevent her live-in boyfriend from raping her eight-year old daughter. In retaliation for the rape, Maya's uncles kill the boyfriend, as Maya is traumatized by both the rape and the subsequent murder of her rapist. Despite this influential, horrifically central event in her childhood, Angelou foresees the possibility, as Freud would say, of working through trauma and grief. Indeed, the narrative is characterized by its relentless optimism, by the author's basic belief in the expressive possibility of literary song and the black girl-woman's voice. Over the course of the narrative, Maya struggles for employment, completes high school after getting pregnant, and finally feels a renewed connection to her life through the birth of her child. Seeing Maya Angelou today, in all of her force and glory, we cannot help but feel optimistic ourselves, as we marvel at what she endured before becoming everything that she so vividly is. |