Rating: 
Summary: Inspiring Story
Review: This is an autobiography of Maya Angelou, telling her story of her hectic life during the 1930's and 1940's in America, a confusing time for everyone. It is an amazingly inspiring story about an insecure African-American girl, that turns into a strong woman, despite all of the hardships thrown at her.
Rating: 
Summary: Enlightening True Story
Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou is an enlightening autobiography about a young black girl growing up in the 1930s. As you read you learn how she handled living with and without her parents, racism, responsibilities, sex, other problems children face today, and more.
Rating:
Summary: 50 words or less summary of theme
Review: This compelling story illustrates how we "are", for we do not live, but merely exist, in the eternal and unconquerable cages of society only to do what we can to survive in mind behind bars we can not break.
Rating: 
Summary: Reader Respone for I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Review: In this powerful autobiography, Maya Angelou candidly recounts her coming of age experience and conveys to readers through soulful diction a vivid picture of life for an African-American girl growing up in America during the 30's, 40's, and 50's. I thought this book was beautifully written and very empowering.
Rating: 
Summary: A summer reading flop.
Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the story of Maya Angelou and her difficult life from her early childhood and onward. To put it plainly, I found this book to be a large amount of incoherent babble. This book simply further emphasizes a point drilled into my head years ago. What they went through was hell, but how many times must the point be proved? I have encountered many passages throughout this autobiography describing white people as "them" or explaining why whites are in fact not even real people! Imagine that! This book fell into my hands late last June and part of a summer homework assignment to read the book, pick ten key passages, and respond to them in a journal like presentation. I found this book extreamly painful to get through and it literally took me until the very last minute to acually sit down and force myself through three desciptions of sexual molestation, and countless descriptions about how white people are "different" or "not of this world". I see the only audience for this book are white supremacists who are looking to change their views on this world.
Rating:
Summary: This is the best book I ever read. Period.
Review: I teach it to my high schoolers when I have the chance. Terribly moving and beautifully written... and funny! Full of life and pride and wisdom. Read it--and take pleasure in the fact that it's been banned in many places!
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and uplifting
Review: The beautiful writing in this book made my heart sing. How I loved the way she worded things! I devoured this book and basked in its warm shower of words. What a blessing to have found her writings.
Rating:
Summary: From Caged to Free
Review: 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.
Rating:
Summary: I know why the caged bird sings
Review: I know why the caged bird sings is a book about a small hometown back many years ago when there was still racism. This book was very calm, just about the blacks life when they were hated for nothing. This book was written by Maya Angelou. A girl named Maya is telling her life story, she starts off by telling about herself then about a woman named Barbara Flowers, and she is the owner of a small shop. As the story goes through it just has many people going in and out of the store and telling what the black people had to do and how the white people treated them because of their skin colors.
Kelsey Allen
Rating: 
Summary: Inspirational? Yes. Exciting? No.
Review: I think this book was inspirational but honestly ... it was so boring a pretty much feel asleep within the first thirty pages. For adventure seekers, this is a "no-no."
| 
