Rating: 
Summary: Well done
Review: I have never read a story like this before. It is about an African American girl growing up analyzing her life and comparing it to other human beings. It is about thinking of only the good and overcoming small obstacles in everyday life. It is about caring and knowing what family is. What a marvelous read.
Rating:
Summary: "Inspiring Writer"
Review: Starr Brown I know Why the Caged Bird Sings is one of the most interesting and inspiring books you will ever read. This book is re-enacted in the reader's mind of the childhood of a women named Maya Angelou. This book discussed her struggles as a child and growing up. Maya went through many rough times ever since she was a little girl. This novel is an autobiography; this book deals a lot with family morals along with self-morals as well. It deals with some adult situations, for example Maya was raped when she was just a very young girl. Since she was raped she went through many emotional problems to the point when she went mute and did not speak to hardly anyone for many years. In I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the reader will learn that Maya found her fate at an immature state of mind and by her knowing that her life would be different and more difficult then anybody else her age. She went through some other really rough times that made her childhood even tougher and painful but at the same time taught Maya to face life's challenges head on.
This novel also talks about the two different lifestyles that both she and her big brother bailey had to encounter. The lives that they had to face in Arkansas with her grandmother and uncle Willie and the life that she had with her mother in St. Louis.
Even though she was not truly happy either place/life being with her grand mother seemed to spark more joy then a little bit in Maya's heart
I would recommend this book and her type of books to any one who knows what it feels like to have a hard life and can relate to her, also to any one who just enjoys reading. This book is not slow pace and it is really easy to get into the book. From this book I got to see that I was not the only one out there that been though some struggles and it made me a stronger person to read and understand the situations and purpose of this book. I enjoyed this novel and plan on reading more or her work in the future.
Rating:
Summary: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Review: This is an enjoyable, easy-to-read short book written by Maya Angelou about her childhood in the segregated deep south. She skillfully decribes both good-times and bad in Stamps, Arkansas where she and her brother, raised by her grandmother and uncle, took on many childhood adventures in and around her grandmother's general store in the Negro section of town. She devotes several chapters to a time when she and her brother lived in Long Beach, California with her fast moving mother and indifferent father. When things go bad, she describes her return to a simple yet orderly life in Stamps. The reader is touched by the difficulties overcome by Maya Angelou and has a new appreciation for those who were raised in a different place and time. Her upbringing filled with discipline, hard-work and solid roles models had a positive impact on her as a person. She was able to overcome the negative influences. Most of all, the key to her success is contagious and when finished, the reader is left with a glimmer of hope that if she can do it, so can I.... no matter what my walk of life. Very inspirational book!
Rating: 
Summary: An interesting but not especially intriguing journey
Review: Maya Angelou chronicles the first sixteen years of her life in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of three installments of her life story. Beginning in dusty Stamps, Arkansas and eventually ending in glamourous San Francisco (while visiting exciting St. Louis and imposing Mexico in between) Angelou pivots her childhood chronicle around youth's joy and tribulations. Alternating between comedy and tragedy, Angelou's work reads like a treasured bedtime story on a chilly evening, blanket and cocoa included. Words are expertly manipulated in order to produce fascinating accounts of otherwise plebeian events. However, the book's Achilles heel likes in these very events; only so many beautifully unique ways exist to explain daily life, and much to the language's avail, the book suffers for it. Still, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou produced a vivid portrait of life in the slow deep South in the 1930s.
Rating: 
Summary: Good, but too narcissistic
Review: Ok, we all know Ms. Angelou is a good poet, but why do we have to read those self-flattering adjectives and phrases every two pages? We all admire the way she made from the far black south to the middle of the white-American consensus, but why do we have to read this shallow, one-sided and pointless description of white people and "stupid" people who didn't realize her brilliance ? Sometimes poeple tend to cover their amazing achievements by being too radical (in the bad sence of the word, namely, a total lack of balanced point of view) and thus turn their interesting stories into a bad science-fictional novella. It's such a shame Ms. Angelou, who is a sensitive poet, failed to reach this simple insight.
Rating:
Summary: I Know Why the Caged Bird Should be Quiet
Review: On the surface, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou has all the ingredients to be an interesting and emotionally stimulating read. It is an autobiography about an African American girl growing up in Stamps, Arkansas. She undergoes many trials in her life like sexual abuse, and being abandoned by her parents at a young age. The young Marguerite also struggles to rise above the rigid beliefs of this time. She pushes herself to succeed in an era when black women are expected to become only poor housewives and mothers. Although the content of this book may seem appealing and intriguing, the lack of attachment and understanding of characters cause readers to feel apathy of what will happen to Marguerite and her family. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings begins with a promise that it will unravel an interesting and touching story, but it becomes dry and is a struggle to finish. Overall this book is a good lesson in strength and perseverance, and I recommend anyone needing a little motivation to read it. However I also recommend borrowing this life story from a library or friend before buying it, because you may not want to read it again.
Rating: 
Summary: Caged Bird: From Fear to Freedom
Review: Maya Angelou was born into a society that was as rigidly stratified as any other in the world. Sometimes this stratification is based on religion, or on ethnic caste, or as in the United States, on skin color. What most often happens is that the favored color takes certain things for granted: upward mobility is within reach, respect is expected, and laws are meant for all (of that color). The subordinate color learns the inverse. In I KNOW WHY THE CAGED BIRD SINGS, Maya, as a child, learns all that plus she conspires against herself and her color. She sees whiteness as a desirable trait, blackness as not. In fact, her early life in Stamps is one prolonged immersion in what she terms a 'black ugly dream.' To compound her dilemma, she faces gender discrimination. Boys on the black pecking order occupy a rung higher. Yet despite all this, Maya even manages to overcome the trauma of rape at the age of eight from a trusted family friend. What Maya takes out of this act of violation is her realization that the ogre of life can be shut down if she learns to shut herself down. For months afterwards, she is deliberately mute. Her silence screams volumes while her soul decides how to heal itself. Eventually, Maya finds solace in the way that all trod on underdogs do: by self-betterment. With the help of her brother Bailey and god-fearing family, Maya discovers that the key to her rebirth lies first in books, then later in extracting nuggets of wisdom from those books which she can apply to her life. The careful reader will surely note that even the very young Maya is exceptionally erudite and glib. This is more a function of the adult Maya structuring her memories enriched with a lifetime of learning from those memories than it is of a precocious child. The grown woman Maya Angelou is a superb writer who uses the traditional devices of figurative language, a sense of the power of the spoken word, and a wide ranging use of symbols, all of which add up to a story that never palls or drags. By the time the reader gets to the end, this reader can see that the journey of a little girl who made the rounds of a short life of physical and emotional bounces has learned from a book what that girl so painfully endured: that freedom can only be achieved if fear is first confronted then beaten down.
Rating:
Summary: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Volume 1 Issue 1
Review: "Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? My light blue eyes were going to hypnotize them.....Then they would understand why I had never picked up a Southern accent, or spoke the common slang, and why I had to be forced to eat pigs' tails and snouts. Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth." The beginning moments when we are introduced to Maya are when we receive a sense of Marguerite's lack of self-confidence. The reader lives and sees life as Marguerite, or Maya sees it, as a young black girl who feels the entire world is staring at her faults and can't see past the color of her skin. With the authors strong use of symbolism and metaphors the reader can actually feel like he or she is traveling with Maya through her life's journey.
Maya is the daughter of divorced parents and has only a thing close to her, her brother Bailey Junior who was a year older and the only person Maya looked up to. Maya lives behind a store that her Grandmother owns in Stamps, Arkansas with her crippled Uncle, her grandmother, and her brother. The store holds a sense of security for Maya as she watches the over-worked cotton pickers come in everyday with the same routine that puts them farther into a debt that they will never pay off. Maya experiences how difficult life is with prejudice people, but as her life progresses she defeats the matter as well as she can. Throughout this time she is introduced to her parents, who she barely knows, who take her and her brother away from the store and to unfamiliar places which brought on an unforgettable event that changed Maya's life forever. Maya experienced many things that many people don't. She is one of the few people whose life story was actually moving enough to be published. Maya Angelou goes from a little, southern, black girl who wishes to be a "a long and blonde haired, light-blue eyed, white girl", to a very mature young adult that is proud of her race.
Rating:
Summary: Please Read This
Review: This book will truly touch you. It paints a very vivid picture of this woman's life struggles and pain. Yet it also gives you the unexpected opportunity to laugh out loud at times. Maya Angelou's writing style is so descriptive and full, she shows you things instead of just telling you about them. This book gained my respect for her as an author, and prompted me to read the rest of her books. All of them are wonderful! If you read this, or any of her other books, you will not be dissappointed. She is so phenominally talented, you will begin to feel that you know her. And trust me, knowing her is a pleasure.
Rating:
Summary: A breakthrough book on childhood sexual abuse and survival
Review: Maya Angelou is always an inspiration to me. She has risen above the painful circumstances of her childhood which at it's worst led her to stop talking entirely. Now she speaks with power. I look up to her, that I may also break through my silence, and speak without fear. Her life and her strength give me hope. I loved reading about the healing relationship she had with her teacher, and her love of reading and writing. I also enjoyed reading about the deep bond that she shares with her brother. Maya Angelou is an amazing poet, an incredible woman, and an inspiration in all that she does.
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