I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Angelou, Maya
Sophomore Honors Communication Arts II
The story of Maya Angelou's childhood includes a mother and a father who have abandoned their children at the tender age of three and four. The kids are shipped to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with Maya's maternal grandmother (Momma) and Uncle Willie who raise the children in the relative prosperity of a general store in an all-black community. In Stamps, the kids are fed, clothed, and protected.Unfortunately, the kids go back to their mother at the age of 8 and 9, and Maya is violently raped by her mother's boyfriend. The incestuous passages are explicit. Maya's uncles murder the man. The guilt of Maya's incestuous relationship to her mother's boyfriend as well as her perceived role in his murder, dominate the thoughts and actions of Maya's life for the remainder of the book.
After the rape and murder, the kids are shipped back to Stamps and Maya begins to emotionally heal from the rape. Maya's brother's (Bailey) world has also been turned upside down by his new awakening to sex. During this time in Stamps, Maya's grandmother continues to indoctrinate the kids with fundamental Christianity, but throughout the book, her beliefs are belittled and mocked. Christianity is used to fuel hatred among whites and blacks: "in that great Gettin' Up Morning, Jesus was going to separate the sheep (them) from the goats (the whitefolks)" and "Momma reminded us that "whitefolks' mouths were most in general loose and their words were an abomination before Christ."
Unfortunately, the kids are sent back to their mother as teens. Both of Maya's negligent and abusive parents live in California. Maya visits both of them and is forced to endure the injustice of their extreme negligence and self indulgent lifestyles. Both parents entertain a steady stream of live-in boyfriends/girlfriends. At one point, Maya's father takes her for a joy ride to Mexico where he regularly indulges in drinking and sex. This experience drives Maya to live with a band of homeless teens in a junkyard for a month -- an experience she describes as very positive.
Sadly, at no point does Maya connect her own serious circumstances to the abdication of responsibility and emotional abuse applied by her own parents.
Perhaps the worst part of the book, as it relates to teens, are the last few chapters where Maya spends several pages contemplating whether or not she is a lesbian. To prove that she isn't, she seduces a neighborhood boy and becomes pregnant. The story ends with Maya reveling in the attention and acceptance she finally receives from her negligent mother as a single teen parent with a new baby.
According to the American Library Association, this book was the third most challenged in the 1990s. (Note that these challenges question the appropriateness of the presence of a book in a public or school library.) classkc.org does not focus on books on school library shelves, but rather, on the small number of books that are assigned as required reading or are otherwise promoted as class-related reading assignments in public classrooms.
Information about I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings can also be found at Parents Against Bad Books in Schools, www.pabbis.com.
The crude language includes many references and comparisons to urine, pee, farting, and defecation, as well as general profanity and racial slurs such as Goddammit, shit, bitch, ass, titties, niggers, jigs, spooks, whore, hell, dykes, bulldaggers, pecker, peckerwood, and "give me some trim". Sometimes the words are used as part of the actual conversation of the characters, but often, the words are used as Maya's personal choice of descriptive writing. "...the plump brown face had been deflated and patted flat like a cow's ordurous dropping" or "the cotton truck spilled the pickers out and roared out of the yard with a sound like a giant's fart." or "I cried and hollered, passed gas and urine." or "I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire."
EXCERPTS:
• When I was described by our playmates as being shit color, he was lauded for his velvet-black skin.
• I knew, for instance, that white men wore shorts, as Uncle Willie
did, and that they ahd an opening for taking out their "things" and
peeing, and that white women's breasts weren't built into their
dresses, as some people said...
• Her (white girl) dress fell down around her shoulders and she had
on no drawers. The slick pubic hair made a brown triangle where her
legs came together.
• Bailey (Maya's brother) explained that Mr. Washington was
probably "doing it" to her. He said that although "it" was bad just
about everybody in the world did it to somebody, but no one else was
supposed to know that. Baily said that the man's things had been cut
off and put in his pocket and he had been shot in the head, all because
the whitefolks said he did "it" to a white woman. I was convinced that
whenever Reverend Thomas came and Momma sent us to the back room they
were going to discuss whitefolks and "doing it."
• Bailey and I received the whipping of our lives. (for laughing in church)
• He taught me that once I got into a fight I should "grab for the balls right away."
• Uncle Ira said to my mother, "Here, Bibbi. Here's this nigger
Patterson. Come over here and beat his ass." ... I admit I was thrilled
by their meanness. They beat up whites and Blacks with the same
abandon...
• His breasts used to embarrass me when walked around in his undershirt. They lay on his chest like flat titties.
• At 8 years old: “...my mother would take me in to sleep with her,
in the large bed with Mr. Freeman. ...Mr. Freeman pulled me to him and
put his hand between my legs. ...He threw back the covers and his
"thing" stood up like a brown ear of corn. He took my hand and said,
"Feel it." It was mushy and squirmy like the inside of a freshly killed
chicken. Then he dragged me on top of his chest with his left arm, and
his right hand was moving so fast and his heart was beating so hard
that I was afraid that he would die. ... Finally he was quiet, and then
came the nice part. This was probably my real father and we had found
each other at last. ... "Get up. You peed in the bed."
• "Ritie (Maya), you love Bailey?" If you ever tell anyone what we did, I’ll have to kill Bailey.”
• Again, as an 8 year old: His pants were open and his "thing" was
standing out of his britches by itself. "No sir, Mr. Freeman" I started
to back away. I didn't want to touch that mushy-hard thing again. ...
He grabbed my arm and pulled me between his legs... he said, "Now, this
ain’t gonna hurt you much. You liked it before, didn’t you?" ... His
legs were squeezing my waist. "Pull down your drawers." ... "We was
just playing before." He released me enough to snatch down my bloomers,
and then he dragged me closer to him. ... "If you scream, I’m gonna
kill you. And if you tell, I’m gonna kill Bailey." ... Then there was
the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart.
The act of rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle
giving because the camel can’t. The child gives, because the body can,
and the mind of the violator cannot."
• I thought I had died ... But Mr. Freeman was there and he was washing me.
• My legs throbbed...hiding my red-and-yellow stained drawers under the mattress...
• "...language is man's way of communicating with his fellow man
and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals."
• Momma reminded us that "whitefolks' mouths were most in general loose and their words were an abomination before Christ."
• I decided I wouldn't pee on her if her heart was on fire.
• the cotton truck spilled the pickers out and roared out of the yard with a sound like a giant's fart.
• Bailey stuck branches in the ground behind the house and covered
them with a worn-through blanket, making a tent. ... There he initiated
girls into the mysteries of sex. One by one, he took the impressed, the
curious, the adventurous into the gray shadows...
• Bailey told me after that Joyce had hairs on her thing and that she ahd gotten them from "doing it" with so many boys.
• "Sister, the Lord don't like little jugs with big ears."
• ...the plump brown face had been deflated and patted flat like a cow's ordurous dropping.
• “..my [dentist] policy is I don’t treat colored people...rather
stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than a nigger’s.... I ain’t gonna mess
around in no niggah’s mouth.”
• “..pretentious little bitch, aren’t you? (Maya's dad's
girlfriend)” ... "Marguerite (Maya) can go to hell..." ... "More pity
for you, you unlucky sow."
• "[dad’s girlfriend says] [your mother’s] a whore" .."I’m gonna
slap you for that, you silly old bitch." [dad’s girlfriend stabs
Maya].. What did she expect if she called my mother a whore? ...looked
down to find blood.. saw a hammer in her hand.. I fled.. sat in the
car, feeling the blood slip down to my buttocks... Cut. It was so
delicious. I didn't mind draining away in the plaid seat cushions.
"Dolores cut me."
• Did I have the nerve to commit suicide? ... But don't kill yourself. You can always do that if things get bad enough.
• No son of hers was going to be exploited by a used-up white
whore, who wanted to milk him of his youth and spoil him for adulthood.
Hell, no. ... Get out? Oh, hell, yes. "Leave me the shit alone." ..."I
sure as hell won't miss her. To hell with her and everybody else."
• Whores were lying down first and gettin gup last in the room next door.
• “The Well of Loneliness was my introduction to lesbianism and
what I thought of as pornography. ... it informed me of the
difficulties in the secret world of the pervert. ...After my third
reading of The Well of Loneliness I became a bleeding heart for the
downtrodden misunderstood lesbians. I thought "lesbian" was synonymous
with hermaphrodite. ... I tried to imagine how two hermaphrodites made
love.
• Then I began to live under my blankets: How did lesbianism begin?
What were the symptoms? The public library gave information on the
finished lesbian...but on the growth of a lesbian, there was nothing.
... It was impossible to determine whether lesbians budded gradually or
burst into being with a suddenness ..."
• I was developing into a lesbian... "Mother... my pocketbook..."
"Ask me, and pass me a cigarette." "Ritie (Maya), do you mean your
vagina?... Well, well, have you got crabs?.. Do you itch? Does your
vagina itch?" don’t have a venereal disease, do you?... something is
growing on my vagina.. Where on your vagina?.. On both sides. Inside.
Ritie, go get me that big Webster's and then bring me a bottle of beer.
• [friend sleeps over].. saw her breasts. I was stunned.. they were
beautiful.. I had been moved by looking at a woman’s breasts.. was
something queer about me.. heard about dykes and bulldaggers.. I needed
a boyfriend.. "If you can't smile and say yes, please don't cry and say
no."
• if pretties [girls] were expected to make the supreme sacrifice
in order to ‘belong’, what could the unattractive female do.. I believe
most plain girls are virtuous because of the scarce opportunity to be
otherwise.. suspicion that I might not be a normal female and my..
awakening sexual appetite..
• "I decided to take matters into my own hands. (An unfortunate but apt phrase)."
• I put the plan into action. "Hey." I plunged, "Would you like to have sexual intercourse with me?"
• He asked, "You mean, you’re going to give me some trim?"
• I assured him [yes].. went to a room.. .turned of the lights..
laborious gropings, pullings, yankings and jerkings. Not one word was
spoken.. our experience had reached its climax [he got] up abruptly..
Okay, see you around.. Thanks to Mr. Freeman 9 years before, I had no
pain of entry to endure. I not only didn’t enjoy it, but my normalcy
was still a question.. Three weeks later.. I found myself pregnant ...
The little pleasure I was able to take from the fact if I could have a
baby I obviously wasn't a lesbian....”
• Mother, regarding me as a woman for the first time, said
indignantly, "She's more than any three weeks." They both accepted the
fact that I was further along than they had first been told but found
it nearly impossible to believe that I had carried a baby, eight months
and one week, without their being any the wiser.
• I had a baby. He was beautiful and mine. Totally mine.
• Mother whispered (in response to Maya's teen motherhood), "See
you don't have to think about doing the right thing. If you're for the
right thing, then you do it without thinking."
The back cover of the book provides this "professional review" from James Baldwin:
"Her portrait is a biblical study of life in the midst of death."