Angelou, M. (1970). I know why the caged bird sings. New York: Random House.
Maya Angelou’s autobiography – a subset of biography – I Know Why a Caged Bird Sings fits squarely in the Realistic Fiction genre because it includes a factual recounting of the lives of real people through their “experiences, influences, accomplishments and legacies (Lynch-Brown, Tomlinson, Short, 2011, p. 171).” Angelou’s autobiography also impinges on fictionalized autobiography because she creates dramatic episodes populated with imagined conversation from things that actually happened to her (Lynch-Brown, Tomlinson, Short, 2011, p. 173, par).
VHS wrapper 1979 made-for-TV movie version (Wikipedia, 2011).
Up through Chapter 24, Angelou chronologically recounts her life and those in it: Her arrival in Stamps, Arkansas from St. Louis, Missouri at age three with older brother Bailey Johnson, Jr. after their mother and father’s divorce to live with their paternal grandmother Annie Henderson who she calls Momma; how she adjusts to small time life; going back to St. Louis briefly to live with mother and when that fails – she is raped by one of her mother Vivian’s friends – returning to Stamps; and finishing school grade school.
Interestingly at this point the story ever so briefly becomes fictional: Maya has to go to a dentist but there isn’t one who is black so Momma takes her to Dr. Lincoln the town’s white dentist. When he refuses to treat Maya because she is black Angelou uses this as an opportunity for Momma to give a powerful peroration on the economic power of black people. Momma had loaned this man money to save his dental practice and scolds him into treating Maja, saying things a black woman might have thought but wouldn’t have dared – at least at that time – say. It is an impressive and beautifully written speech.
At 13 Maya moves to Los Angeles then Oakland, California and finally San Francisco with her mother who in the latter city marries Daddy Cidell a good male role model. Maya spends a summer in Mexico with her indifferent father and his hostile girlfriend Dolores. There she undergoes further teenage vicissitudes including living in a junkyard with homeless teenagers. When Maya returns to San Francisco, at only 15 she becomes – despite racist hiring policies – a streetcar conductor. The book’s chronology ends with Maya confidently raising the son she has had out of wedlock.
I taught this book in my IB Literature class in Beijing in spring 2010 so it was interesting to revisit it and reconsider what still worked and what still didn’t: Angelou is a master of physical detail. Her depiction of Momma’s store at the beginning of the book when she first came back is a miracle of description because it lets us really feel how this little girl is finally grounded in a palpably secure environment. This came back in the rereading with the same power it had the first time. But as I did then, I find the plot uneven: The interlude in St. Louis where she is raped is a bit contrived and her Mexico hiatus with her father and his Mexican girlfriend unconvincing. And I didn’t and still don’t feel the book ends effectively. It seems to come out of nowhere, seems tacked on to the rest of the book.
When Angelou describes places though – like the store and the forest clearing where she and Louise her grade school friend bond – the book is wonderful. But setting aside personal biases, in my experience Caged Bird really connects with young adult readers, especially youths of color. For instance, I had a young Tanzanian in my class who had never been to America and had no idea of how racist America could be even be even today. But it wasn’t the racism that Angelou captured that touched him: It was how real she made her characters and how she ennobled them. I suspect he also really liked Bailey, Jr. because he was like Bailey very talented and very unfocused.
Finally the book is an excellent read for young adults because Angelou is very honest about sexual issues and shows how a young black female teenager can overcome them. She also successfully navigates through relationships with various males including fathers, father figures good and bad and boyfriends and in the main negotiates good outcomes for herself. Maya is clearly not bitter and by book end has decided that man or no man she will survive.
Question: What relationship does work ethic have to do with racism? Does racism affect men and women differently?
References
Lynch-Brown, C, Tomlinson, C.M. & Short, K. G. (2011). Essentials of children’s
literature. Boston: Pearson.
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