Damn....

I didn't really know what this book was about when I requested it from my library system as I went through a list of "must read books/classics".

I knew of the title, but that was it. I'm actually quite glad I knew so little about it going in.

This book turned out to be a truly powerful read. It vividly showed just how much emotions words can convey.

It was my first book by Maya Angelou, and I think it won't be the last.

After reading this one, I will definitely be on the lookout for more of her works.

I'm eager to explore the other stories and emotions that she can bring to life through her writing.

The experience of reading this book has opened my eyes to the beauty and power of literature, and I can't wait to see what else lies ahead in my literary journey.

Maya Angelou's historic and memorable autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings truly deserves its acclaim.

She meticulously details her experience from the tender age of three to the peak of her adolescence at 16, with several profound themes intricately woven in. These include the arduous journey of overcoming trauma, the desperate struggle to escape the confining clutches of racism, and the undeniable importance of family, among others.

To me, this book functioned as both a mirror of my own childhood and a window to another individual's completely different coming of age.

Angelou includes fascinating information about her family that adds yet another dynamic to her already rich life. She writes about her childhood in such a vivid way that it transports the reader directly into her world.

Still, some sections of this book left me underwhelmed. It felt as if there were parts that received an excessive amount of attention, while others did not attain nearly enough. Instead of delving deeply into the practices of the people in her church, I yearned for more time to be allotted to the developments that occurred later in the story, the events that left her feeling out of place and unsure of herself.

Despite my criticisms, I would wholeheartedly recommend I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings to anyone searching for a well-written coming of age story. Angelou's voice and position within society give her a powerful and unique perspective to share, one that is both enlightening and inspiring.

4.8 ⭐️

One of the best books I've read recently within this theme and literary genre (fictional autobiography).

As a memoir, in my opinion, it is a book of utmost importance for the documentation and defense of the rights of African Americans, as well as the history and fight against racism in the US.

It tells us the first part of Maya Angelou's life story through her own so intimate and true perspective, which gives it an enormous richness and meaning. And what a life this is! I really want to read its continuation. Marvelously well-written, it will stay with me forever.

Today, Maya Angelou is often regarded as a kind of literary matriarch, a comforting mother figure. Her poetry, especially the inspiring "Still I Rise," is quoted more frequently than her prose. She is remembered for her acquaintance with world leaders like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and is spoken of in similar terms as Oprah. Right up until the end of her life, Angelou continued to appear in some unexpected places, such as dispensing wisdom in the 1993 Tupac Shakur/Janet Jackson film "Poetic Justice" and leading Kendrick Lamar in prayer on his 2012 narrative album "good kid, m.A.A.d. city." She was typically cast in the role of a grandmotherly guiding voice. A retired minister from my parents' predominantly white, midwestern Baptist church shared one of her poems on Facebook a few weeks ago, and no one seemed to bat an eye.

I had never read her books myself, and that was more or less the version of Angelou I expected to find in her most famous prose work. I knew there would be hardship, as it's a mid-century memoir by an African American woman. But I thought the treatment would lean towards the uplifting. However, I was wrong. "Caged Bird" is far from sentimental or "feel-good." This is a much younger and more feisty Angelou, 41 and not yet known as a writer, although she had already had several lifetimes' worth of other experiences. The book covers her first 17 years in a loose, anecdotal format, and the stories she tells are gritty, brutally honest, sometimes savage, and often sardonically funny. Far from the pious church lady she is often portrayed as, the Angelou here is persistently skeptical of religion, ambivalent towards her family and neighbors, and frank about sex and other potentially scandalous topics. And I must admit, I found this real Angelou much more appealing than the pop culture one.

The prose in "Caged Bird" is blunt and conversational, although there are, unsurprisingly, passages of real poetry as well. Unlike some memoirists, Angelou isn't overly concerned with retrospectively shaping the events of her life into a clear narrative. The structure is episodic, with each chapter typically covering one incident, period, or theme from her young life, and any of these episodes could stand alone as a self-contained piece. As a result, the book is best read like a short story collection, a chapter or two at a time; otherwise, the tonal and topical shifts can be a bit jarring, especially since the book deals with some truly difficult subject matter, often couched in good humor or at least a life-goes-on attitude. This reaches a climax in one extremely harrowing episode in the middle, involving the repeated rape of eight-year-old Maya by her mother's boyfriend and his subsequent killing by vigilantes. It's a tough section to read, and the memory of it lingers over the rest of the book, as it surely did over Angelou's own life, even after she has moved on to other subjects and regained her more nonchalant tone.

Most of "Caged Bird" is centered on Angelou's childhood in the small, segregated town of Stamps, Arkansas (with a brief stint in St. Louis), but in the last third or so, as Maya enters her teens, she and her brother move to California to live with their mother. Whether due to this shift from rural to coastal life or simply the excitement and drama of adolescence, it's here that Angelou's story really starts to pick up speed, almost too fast for the book to keep up. In the last few chapters, we see her accompanying her father on his drunken escapades across the border, living for a while in a scrapyard with a group of street kids, single-handedly desegregating the San Francisco streetcar system, grappling with doubts about her sexuality, and then getting pregnant in an attempt to prove she's straight, all before turning 18. The book ends abruptly, just as Angelou has her baby. If you're like me, you'll be relieved to learn that "Caged Bird" is only the first of seven volumes of autobiography she wrote over the course of her life, with the last one published just a year before her death at 86. I'm not entirely sure why "Caged Bird" is subject to the Dante's "Inferno" effect (where the first book in a series is the only one anyone talks about), but for my part, I'm even more eager to read about what she did in adulthood.

Nevertheless, this is a classic for a reason, and like all true classics, its reputation doesn't fully do it justice. Angelou's work, like her life, resists easy classification, and now that I've had a real taste, I'm excited to discover what other surprises are still in store.

Maya Angelou needs no introductions. At the very least, her name and face are known to all those who followed the Black Renaissance of the Oprah Winfrey era - of whom Angelou was a mentor and friend.

Still, it's always worth remembering that Maya Angelou is a symbol (among countless other reasons) for triumphing in a world that, although trying to limit her opportunities from birth, could not resist her force of life.

"You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise."

[...]

"Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide."

"Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise."

"And Still I Rise", by Maya Angelou

Angelou will be a mother, poet, singer, activist, dancer, actress, screenwriter, professor, and a hundred other wonderful things, but "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" comes long before all of that. The first of the author's seven autobiographies deals with the years she spent in Long Beach, St. Louis, and Stamps, Arkansas, where she learned how "growing up is painful for a black girl in the South" and "having a sense of her misfit is the rust on the razor that threatens her neck", divided between worldly and separated parents, criminal uncles, and the embrace of her grandmother Baxter, an authoritarian woman with white blood, suffering from chronic bronchitis.

Although always cited for the cruelty with which she describes the sexual abuse she suffered at the age of seven, this autobiography is much more than a passionate account of the cruelty of adults towards children - which it also is, and very justly. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is, above all, a watercolor painting, not without some nostalgia, of a world where the lack of nuances between right and wrong made life a simpler place...

"In the cotton-picking season, the late afternoons revealed the harshness of the lives of blacks in the South, which, in the early morning, had been softened by the gift of nature that was the torpor, forgetfulness, and soft light of the kerosene lamp."

...a world closer to the fabulation narratives of a primitive North American:

"Mother Dear would open boxes of stale crackers and we would sit around the meat-cutting board in the back of the Store. I would cut onions and Bailey would open two or even three cans of sardines and let their oil and fishing boats drip all over the place. That was dinner. At night, when we were alone like that, Uncle Willie didn't stutter, tremble, or show any signs of having a'spell'. It was as if the peace at the end of the day was a guarantee that the pact God had made with children, blacks, and the disabled was still in force."

Because Angelou writes from a distant point of view, where "the logic of childhood never asks for proof" and where "all conclusions are absolute", this autobiography is simultaneously candid and desolate...

"In Stamps, segregation was so absolute that most black children had no idea at all what whites looked like. They only knew that they were different and that they inspired fear in them, and in that fear was included the hostility of the impotent towards the powerful, the poor towards the rich, the worker towards the boss, and the ragged towards the well-dressed.
I remember not believing that whites really existed."

...and reveals a small Angelou determined, strong, and dreamy, capable of invoking the tools she needs to survive in a world where the reciprocity of violence is a given:

"Whites couldn't be people because they had such small feet, their skin was too white and transparent, and when they walked, they didn't put their weight on the front of their feet like people do: they walked putting their weight on their heels, like horses.
People were those who lived on my side of town. I didn't like all of them, or rather, I didn't like almost any of them over there, but they were people. Those others, the strange pale creatures who lived in their alien non-life, were not even considered people. They were white."

Fifteen years after starting her autobiographical writing, Angelou ends her enterprise. In this "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", strongly focused on the racist dichotomy and misogynistic prejudice, the author emphasizes the importance of words (after a post-traumatic mutism, who better than her to give them value?), plays with the duality of reality/fiction, and deals with the first great matriarchal figures who will dictate the model of her life.

Repeatedly banned from the reading lists of North American schools and libraries (just like the books of Toni Morrison or James Baldwin - you can sense a certain tone in this conversation, right?) for featuring explicit language, descriptions of sexual abuse, racism (and incitement of racism against whites, of course, or this wouldn't even be a topic), drug abuse, sex between minors, and pregnancy, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is one of the most banned books in history. When questioned about this topic, Angelou simply replied: "Many times my books are banned by people who never read two sentences." It says it all.

I simply can't fathom how I managed to wait this long to delve into Angelou's memoir of her formative years, spanning from the tender age of 3 to 16. The manner in which I consumed it was by listening to her vividly narrate her story, as if we were seated on a front porch in some idyllic location, sipping on a glass of refreshing lemonade.

So many aspects of her account were arduous to listen to, with some parts reducing me to tears and others eliciting a smile. Every word was written with absolute authenticity, presenting her life just as it was for her. I couldn't help but continuously reflect that her experiences - tragic, inspiring, extraordinary, soul-crushing, and uplifting - all culminated in shaping who she became, a remarkable writer with an astonishing depth of understanding about life in its truest sense.

I could easily expound further, but I shall refrain. Do yourself a huge favor and listen to this book! It is truly amazing and will leave an indelible mark on your heart and mind.

Nuoširdžiai maniau, kad čia knygos perleidimas. Nors nebuvau skaičius, bet tiek Mayos Angelou, tiek šitos knygos vardai buvo girdėti. Tiek girdėti, kad ir žinojau apie ką ši autobiografija, žinojau ir apie rašytojos indėlį į JAV kultūros pokyčius, didžius darbus vardan rasinės lygybės. Prisiminiau, kad ir per „Simpsonus“ mačiau Mayą!

Ši knyga - garsiausia ir ryškiausia iš visų jos septynių autobiografijų. Maya čia itin atvirai pasakoja ką reiškia mažametei juodaodei gyventi Didžiosios depresijos laikais, pietinėse valstijose. Visa knyga - tarsi baugi išpažintis ne tik norinti atverti akis pasauliui, bet lyg ir pačiai tą skausmo naštą nusimesti. Ir ji čia rašo apie tokius išgyvenimus, kuriais sunku patikėti. Nuo to, kaip ją, devynmetę išprievartavo ir tvirkino patėvis, iki nuolatinio visuomenės kišimo galvon, jog juodaodė, kad ir kaip gerai besimokydama, jokių perspektyvų neturi.

Liūdna buvo skaityti ir dėl neteisybės, ir dėl kažkokio susitaikymo/atleidimo autorės tone - apie viską pasakojo be jokios dramos, be jokių pasikarščiavimų, be jokių susireikšminimų. Tiesiog ramiai konstatavo asmeninius faktus, kurie, 1969 metais knygai pasirodžius, šokiravo pasaulį: ji buvo draudžiama kai kuriose mokyklose ir bibliotekose.

Šalia savo asmeninio gyvenimo siaubų Maya pasakoja ir apie JAV istoriją, apie Antro pasaulinio karo sugeneruotus pokyčius valstijose. Apie tai, kaip juodaodžiai keliavo iš mažų, neturtingų valstijų ir kūrėse didžiosiose, užimdamai kariauti išėjusių japonų vietas. Kalba ir apie sudėtingus savo disfunkcinės šeimos santykius: nepalaužiamą ir LABAI dievobaimingą močiutę, gražuolę mamą, kuriai vaikai tikrai ne visada buvo pirmoje vietoje, tėvą, kuris čia būdavo, čia nebe. Brolį, kuris nebuvo toks tvirtas kaip Maya, bet lygiai kaip ir ji kapanojosi neteisingame laikmatyje, neteisingose jo odai primestose taisyklėse ir net įstatymuose.

Puiki knyga, o puikiausia ji būtent Mayos drąsa ir gebėjimu taip lengvai ir suprantamai perteikti tokias baisybes. Atverianti akis autobiohgrafija, kuri tikrai tikrai tikrai turėjo būti išleista ir lietuviškai. Maya Angelou - dids įkvėpimas. Net patyrusi visas įmanomas gyvenimo neteisybes, ji vis tiek kovojo už savo ir savų teises, dirbo su Martinu Lutheriu Kingu ir už savo drąsą, protą, pasiryžimą ir nuopelmnus ne kartą apdovanota JAV prezidentų.

This was an extremely powerful read. The moment I read about how Maya was raped at the tender age of 8, my heart broke into pieces. The description of the incident was so vivid and heart-wrenching.

"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."

It was as if I could feel the pain and trauma that Maya endured. The author has beautifully written this account, filled with raw emotions that are palpable on every page. This book is truly timeless, as it not only tells a story of a tragic event but also explores the human spirit and the power of survival. It makes the reader reflect on the harsh realities of the world and the importance of standing up against such atrocities.

This is the story of a girl. Her grandmother calls her Ritie, her brother Bailey calls her Maya, and she is also known as Marguerite.

When she was three and her brother was four, her parents decided to end their marriage. As a result, they were sent from Long Beach, California to live with their father's mother in Stamps, Arkansas. Reading about Marguerite's life up to the age of sixteen, when she had a baby, is truly incredible.

Her religious grandmother, known as Momma, ensured that the two children had a good upbringing. However, reading about the treatment of blacks by whites saddened me deeply.

I was delighted to read that Maya discovered William Shakespeare and other things. Also, the antics of Maya's mother were surprising for a woman of that time.

I could really empathize with the author as she grew up surrounded by dreadful racial prejudice. In the thirties in the States, it was not a good time for black people living with whites. Why should the whites be considered superior just because of the color of their skin? It's nonsense.

Despite the difficult times, laughter did prevail among the two siblings. However, the way she became pregnant was really beyond belief for me, especially considering the time period. This was long before the freedom-loving sixties and the arrival of the birth pill.

Still, the entire book is a journey of enlightenment for Maya. I ended up having the highest admiration for her determination. When she returned to California to live with her mother, she was only fifteen but had to lie about her age to get a job. She was adamant about wanting a job on the streetcars. Her mother told her it was impossible as the work was only for whites, but she persisted and won in the end. Imagine being the first young black woman to succeed in entering the whites' world in the forties.

All in all, this is a very moving book, superbly written.

I received this book as a Father’s Day present. I must admit that, living in the UK, I only know of Maya Angelou from her featuring in various of the “Women Who Changed the World” books that I read with my daughters a few years back.

Overall, I found this an excellent book. There are too many reviews on here for me to really add much. However, I would say that I found it much more of a literary novel in style. Perhaps the prose is rather over-complicated at times. But as a result, it is even more affecting and enjoyable.

This book offers a unique perspective into the life of Maya Angelou. It takes the reader on a journey through her experiences, emotions, and growth. The writing is rich and vivid, painting a detailed picture of her world.

Despite its literary style, the book remains accessible and engaging. It is a powerful and inspiring read that will leave a lasting impression on the reader. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the life and work of Maya Angelou or in the genre of autobiography.

Labai sunku apibūdinti šią be galo ypatingą knygą.

It is extremely difficult to describe this extraordinarily special book.

One of the books that encompasses both horror and joy simultaneously, making it a pleasure to read.

Through a very subtle description of daily life with minute details, the experiences of racism, sexual coercion (the feelings they evoke and the extremely profound experiences), the search for love and validation, and much more are revealed in a highly literary and beautiful way.

Thank you to "Kitos knygos" for the beautiful translation.

I very much desire the translations of other Maya Angelou books as well.