I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
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Book Reviews of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Book Review: An Inspirational and Uplifting Story
Summary: 5 Stars
I would recommend this book to anybody because it's a really inspirational and uplifting book. Maya Angelou is an excellent author who has overcame many tough obstacles in her lifetime, which we read about in this book. After reading some of Maya Angelou's rough experiences she went through in her life, you would probably have to say wow! I used to think that autobiographies were boring, but now, this book is my favorite. A movie version of this book could not compare because Maya Angelou's choice of words lets the reader visualize the setting, feel what she's feeling and the intensity, shock, sadness at certain points are really incredible. If you're going through a tough time in your life, feel weak or helpless, reading this book will get you up and running again. It's somewhat refreshing in a sense that after you finish reading it, you feel like you can conquer anything life throws your way. You feel invincible, like nothing can possibly break you. You'll feel like you can bounce back from anything depressing almost immediately. You start to feel your strength, confidence, and sense of self come back to you. Maya Angelou is an author that once you pick up her book, you won't be able to put it down. I found myself staying up at all hours of the night reading this book because I had to see what happened next. I was first introduced to this book in an English class of mine. We read an excerpt and I, along with the rest of the class had questions and wanted to read more, so I knew I wouldn't be satisfied with only reading the excerpt, and went to buy the book. I was hooked after only reading the first chapter. Not only the story, but Maya Angelou's style of writing gets you hooked. She'll reminisce a certain experience, and put fourth her thoughts and opinions now that she's wiser and more knowledgeable. This is a really interesting and inspiring book that I'm very glad I read because of a moral that it has. It basically says, to me, I can do and overcome any obstacle in my life.Book Review: From Caged to Free
Summary: 5 Stars
Maya Angelou has led and interesting life, and she does an excellent job portraying it in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.As a young child growing up, Maya feels that she does not fit in. The opening lines: "What are you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay..." resonate throughout the whole novel. Marguerite Johnson (Maya Angelou's real name) is on a search for acceptance, but she can't find it. Society is telling her that she has to change who she is to be accepted, her grandmother is more concerned about doing the Lord's work then telling Marguerite that she loves her, and her parents are constantly shipping her off to live with someone else whenever things get too hard.
As Marguerite matures into a teenager she learns to deal with the social isolation she feels. She deals with the racism that segregated Stamps deals out to her, and even manages to become a streetcar driver in Los Angeles, something unheard of for Black people at the time. She overcomes her sense of displacement by feeling her own way around life. She has accepted that her mother notices her out of "the corner of her existence" and she learns to make the most of that. She is begins to get more comfortable with her body at the end of the novel, as she cuddles with her newborn child.
I suggest this book for anyone. It is an excellent read. I do, however, feel that it is a better book for a college student than a high school one because there are many allusions in it that a high school student would be unfamiliar with. I recently taught this novel to a group of 11th graders, and I had to continually stop to explain things like who Oedipus was and why Maya refers to herself as being like Switzerland in World War II while her brother and Mother Dear were fighting. While I do not disagree with teaching the novel in high school, I think it should be looked at again by a more mature audience. You will get a deeper appreciation for what a great writer Maya Angelou really is.
Book Review: The struggles of a young girl and how she overcame them.
Summary: 5 Stars
A quick review by Michelle A. Bejar.......I first read this book in my English class in the University I am currently attending. It became one of my favorites, that I will have in my own library of books. I know why the caged bird sings, is the biography about Maya Angelou herself, a book that helps understand the struggles of a little girl and her brother Bailey. They both had a hard life, living between Arkansas and California, but both overcame those issues in such a young age. Both children in their young age were not living with their parents due to the divorce, but rather were staying with their grandmother in Arkansas. The grandmother took on the father and mother figure for them, they later had begun to call her Mama too. After moving with their grandmother, the children were facing racial discrimination against them. I think that we can all learn from these issues to make life itself easier. Some readers might not realize this, but I feel that this book teaches us the hard facts about racial issues in life. In Maya's life racism was not the only issue she had to deal with. Once she moved back with her mother, she was raped by her mothers boyfriend at a young age. This is another way she shows the reader how she dealt with hard situations in her young life. I personally recommend this book to adolescent readers, it deals with issues that need to be learned at a young age. I feel that the book will help the majority of the readers to cross giant walls of cultures, race and people. It will help us to learn how to treat and learn about others who might not be the same way as we are. At the end, I think that it will strengthen the race relations between people for the better. In conclusion I would like to add that this book can be funny at time, but also heart breaking at other times. It is the genuine story of a girl, where at times we can relate too.Book Review: Entertaining and eye opening
Summary: 5 Stars
As a child, Maya encounters the bruising effects of racism and segregation in America. She lives in Stamps, Arkansas, a town segregated to the point that as a young girl, Maya isn't sure that white people even exist.
As she grows up, her confrontations with racism become more blatant and more personal. For instance, at her eighth grade graduation, a white speaker talks to her in a condescending tone, her white boss calls her Mary, knowing full-well her name. And perhaps the most public example is when a white dentist refuses to provide her service. Even worse, Maya sees how well white girls are treated. She begins to believe that the only way to be treated well is to be beautiful and the only way to be beautiful is to be a blonde-haired, paled-skinned, blue-eyed darling girl.
This story is rich with character as Maya is surrounded by those who live under the rules of the South. The feelings portrayed are raw, and the role of a child's imagination is poignant-magnificently done. She manages to bring out aspects beyond those of a young girl's private thoughts through real events like Joe Louis's world championship boxing match. A clear victory for blacks in the eyes of the black community, but an example of the white man's media failing to publicly recognized an African American as a hero. Louis' victory also shows the desperate, lonely nature of the black community's hope for vindication.
Maya begins to learn that she and her family are meant to be held back by a fearful public. Limited in what they can do to better themselves-demeaned for even trying. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a story about the pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society and how profoundly such a society shapes the character of an individual and the dynamics of a family. It is a story of how one girl strived to surmount such pressures.
Book Review: A Beautiful Memoir
Summary: 5 Stars
A lot of negative criticism flows around 'I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings', based on people's conception that Angelou is a racist or trying to obtain sympathy from the reader, but these people obviously have never been introduced to the basic definition of memoir. A memoir is a person's own account of their life, and this account is typically written complete with all thoughts and feelings from various ages. Angelou writes with a pro-black slant through the book (I won't deny this) because that is how things were when she was growing up. This doesn't reflect her current opinions on white people in any way. The book, as a memoir, is meant to show the reader how things were, not how they are. She is accurately portraying a time that most younger readers of today cannot understand, because of the integrated society that they have grown up in. It's a shame that people can no longer empathize with an author who had a different situation from their own. To these readers, I suggest reading the Brittany Spears biography or some such similar claptrap. Secondly, Angelou is not trying to evoke sympathy, she is simply stating the events of her life, as she percieved them at the time. No where does it say that the reader must percieve them in the same way, or that Angelou herself maintains the same thoughts to this day. If you feel that writing about bad situations is an automatic cry for sympathy, then stay away from this book and read something with a happy ending. People complain that this book had no story. How incredibly egocentric of them not to recognize that Caged Bird tells Angelou's story, and that she is thoughtful enough not to rap everything up in a nice little bow at the end, which would have totally cheapened a fabulous piece of literature.