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Summary: my review on the caged bird.
Review: this is a review on "why the caged bird sings." Ritie and bailey's parent's marriage ends. two of them moves to Stamps to live with their grandmother. Stamps is a deep southern town where segregation is deeply effected. Ritie, the main character goes through rape, racism and her own conflicts during her childhood. her grandmother Mrs. Henderson helps her through with her unique faith and endless love. she grows up to a be one , faithful and intelligent women that leads the herats of all black men and women
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Summary: not for kids, but worthwhile
Review: First let me say that I liked this book much better than I expected to. Angelou's prose, as one would expect, is often poetic and she looks back at her early life with little of the anger and hatred which so marred Richard Wright's Black Boy (see Orrin's review). That said, let me also say that I agree with the school boards that have banned the book from libraries and classrooms. The scenes where, as a child, she is sexually accosted by one of her mother's friends are too disturbing for young readers; heck, it was too disturbing for me. But more importantly, the book ends with her triumphantly getting herself with child, though still a teen. I can think of no message more inappropriate for young readers. Let them wait and read the book in a couple years, it will still be around and they will have developed a fuller and more appropriate personal context in which to judge it. GRADE: B
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Summary: I know why the caged bird sings.
Review: I highly recommend this book! This book gave a good perspective of what'd itod be like as an African American girl. Maya wrote from the heart and it showed in her work! Her life story was fun reading about b/c it was real, exciting and original!
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Summary: An Impressive Account of a Black Woman's Childhood
Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou's first of her series of autobiographies. In Angelou's book she includes a myriad of experiences from her childhood which have affected her life positively and negatively. These experiences are derived from racial issues of the south to her inconsistent family life. George E. Kent states, "The book is rich in portraits of a wide assortment of blacks, descriptions of the rhythms of their lives, and evocations of the patterns of the different environment." Through these descriptions Angelou amazingly gives the point of view of a young, developing child. Through the insights of a child the reader is able to connect with the author's life on a more personal level. Kent also states that "...she has employed what has become a rather personalized style..." I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an account of Angelou's childhood. The story begins when three year old Marguerite Johnson (Maya Angelou) and her four year old brother, Bailey, are sent away by her divorcing parents to live with their paternal Grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. This move is only the beginning of an inconsistent childhood. Grandmother Henderson represents strict religious traditions in a poor black community in the racist south. Angelou generalizes the children's situation as follows: "Years alter I discovered that the United States had been crossed thousands of times by frightened Black children traveling alone to their newly affluent parents in Northern cities, or back to grandmothers in Southern towns...." To continue the inconsistency at the age of eight, during the return to her mother, she endures rape by her Mother's lover. As a result of this, Marguerite stops speaking on her return to Stamps. The duration of Angelou's life she must overcome many barriers in order to find herself. In this search for herself, Angelou questions her sexuality. As a result of this confusion she embarks in a meaningless sexual encounter. This encounter will affect the rest of her life. Maya Angelou's childhood proves to be very significant. She is able to give the readers a balanced feeling and understanding of a black child during this time and the inconsistencies in which she endures. A black child's life is described by Kent as follows, " In this fast life area of black tradition, the children receive great kindness and considerable impact from built-in instabilities." One specific inconsistency is a role of a mother figure in her childhood. This situation relates to racial conflict and is described through a certain quote from the book. "She questions whether she loves her children enough-or more terribly, does she love them too much?... In the face of these contradictions, she must provide a blanket of stability, which warms but does not suffocate, and she must tell her children the truth about the power of white power without suggesting that it cannot be challenged."(p.123-24) Although the introduction of this book tends to be slow at times, Angelou successfully connects her readers into her account of her childhood and through her encounters with various people and situations she expresses what has helped mold her into who she is today. Overall, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an explicit and honest look into a black child's life. Maya Angelou's account of her childhood attracted me from the beginning to the end. I enjoyed reading about all of her experiences and even learned from some of them as I read. Such as, "that life loved the person who dared to live it." (p.129) Also Vivian Baxter's ( Angelou's mother) motto on life "hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between."(p.288) Maya Angelou hit a personal note for me and many other Americans. This autobiographical attempt is very much a success.
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Summary: I know why the caged bird sings
Review: Book Review By Jillian Carrick Growing up in a time of depression and racism, Maya Angelou's first autobiography narrates the struggles she coped with as a black child living in the south. Her first of many vivid memories in the opening of, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is when she is three years old and her brother Bailey four, and their parents send them by train to live with relatives in Stamps, Arkansas. Maya is formally raised in a proper and religious manner by her grandma Henderson (Momma) who serves as a role model for her because she triumphs in spite of her restrictions. While in Stamps, Maya encounters many insightful people who prepare her for prejudice, but help build her the confidence to succeed in a world lacking equality. She is taught that as long as she abides by the Lord and the rules of the bible, she will never be mislead. Maya Angelou, known as Marguerite Johnson in her early years, is able to clearly recapture her ambitious efforts through moving, tear-jerking tales of her life up until age sixteen. Throughout this dynamic, straightforward autobiography, Angelou provides a child's perspective on a repressive and challenging world of adults. She states, "The art of autobiography as a means for a writer is to go back to the past and recover through imagination and invention what has been lost" (Novels for Students; volume 2). In her first, and many say her best of a series of five autobiographies, Marguerite reveals the gruesome details of being raped at age eight by her mother's lover. She explains her perplexing fears after the incident, and how she refuses to speak much at all for five consecutive years believing that she was responsible for Mr. Freeman's death (the man who raped her) simply by speaking his name in court. Marguerite soon becomes aware of her expected place in society just by observing how her race is treated throughout her years of silence. As she tries to discover herself and recover her own voice she realizes how many closed doors she will face, and how it seems very few will ever open. Marguerite thinks, "It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense" (153). She begins to comprehend a reality that, "we were maids and farmers, handymen and washerwomen, and anything higher that we aspired to was farcical and presumptuous" (152). Maya Angelou's, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is not just any old book to pass the hours, but rather the true story of a miraculously distinguished woman who deserves to be remembered as an extraordinary human-being. This book is special in the way that it keeps your feelings and opinion racing while it simultaneously expands your culture. In addition, "This work also affords insights into the social and political tensions pervading the 1930's" (Gale literary databases document). I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings leaves you full of curiosity about the next fifty years of Maya Angelou's successful life which she doesn't entice us with until her following four sequels. With Marguerite's coming of age in this overwhelming autobiography, the reader senses a truth about her, and it becomes no challenge to understand her suffrage in an expanding country full of discrimination. Maya writes, "If growing up is painful for a Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat" (3).
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Summary: A Beautiful Memoir
Review: 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.
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Summary: My Review
Review: I thought that this book was very good and very interesting, but I also felt that there was too much vivid sexual descriptions...I read this book as an assignment for my eighth grade english class, and it was very awkward to discuss some of the chapters. We were even instructed not to read the chapter where she is pondering her sexuality and lesbianity. I think that, as good a book as I found this to be, it was not appropriate for an eighth grade english class....not that its Maya Angelou's fault! well I hope you all enjoyed this book as much as I did...
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Summary: Most Overrated Author of Our Time, Thanks Ophrah!
Review: Try Derek Walcott if you have any intelligence.
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Summary: i know why the cage bird sings
Review: I am recently studying the book for my 2nd yr A Level, and I am facinated by it.I feel that the book is really good, maybe a little far fetched in some places when you realize the age of the child. I read a review the other day from america. It said that some parents had wanted the book to be banned because of the paunagraphic material that was in the book. I thought that this was very amusing, they obviuosly didnt read the book at all... i have got to do the book for a coursework module and i am looking forward to writing an essay on this stunning read! ;o)
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Summary: No logro interesarme
Review: Esta obra me resulta increíblemente pesada y su lectura me pareció infructífera. La autora no logro interesarme en el tema familiar que trataba y creo que este libro esta muy por debajo de sus poemas, que son rítmicos y hermosos, llenos de vida. Quizás este un poco prejuiciado a leer biografías o autobiografías pero he leído unas cuantas mas o menos soportables. Creo que las personas interesadas en Maya Angelou deberían leer sus poesías y dejar a un lado este libro. Luis Mendez
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