By Julie Sara Porter, Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Maya Angelou's classic memoir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is probably the gold standard of childhood memoirs. Angelou recounted a childhood troubled by parental separation, racism, child molestation, sexism, and teenage pregnancy with beauty and intelligence that also defined her career as a poet and Civil Rights activist.
Maya, born Marguerite Johnson (but nicknamed "My" or "Maya" by her older brother, Bailey) recounted her childhood from the time she was three years old when she and her brother were sent to live at their grandmother's home in Stamps, Arkansas to when she was 16 and gave birth to her son, Clyde. Angelou's autobiography is written exclusively from her childhood self in which she is intelligent, shy, insecure, and confused about the world around her.
The book is filled with beautiful descriptions of Angelou's memories. On her and Bailey's arrival in Stamps, she describes the reaction of her grandmother's store (which is the nerve center of Stamps) as "Early in the century, Momma (we soon stopped calling her Grandmother) sold lunches to the sawmen in the lumber yard (east Stamps) and the seedmen at the cotton gin (west Stamps). Her crisp meat pies and cool lemonade when joined to her miraculous ability to be in two places at the same time assured her business success." Using humor and beautiful description, Angelou captures her youth as well as she captured her poetry in a way that enchants and inspires the Reader.
Angelou's grandmother, Annie Henderson, filled a loving presence in Angelou's young life. She writes "(Her grandmother) was undemonstrative in her love but uncompromising in that love. A deep-brooding love hung over everything she touched." "Momma" Henderson was a woman of deep strength and faith. Many of Angelou's strongest memories are of her grandmother taking her to church, introducing her to the various members of the community, and distributing motherly wisdom and advice to Maya and Bailey. She was a true warm and motherly soul that provided comfort for Angelou's dark childhood.
Many of Angelou's darkest childhood memories were caused by those who should have loved and cared for her: her parents. Her father, Bailey Johnson Sr. was a distant presence in young Maya's life. In fact he only appears twice in the book: once to drive his daughter to St. Louis to live with her mother and another time to invite a then-teenage Maya to spend the summer with him and his girlfriend in San Diego (The summer ended with a huge fight between Maya, her father, and his girlfriend resulting in her becoming temporarily homeless.)
As bad a time as Angelou had with her father, the time with her mother was worse. Her mother had
a very glamorous appearance almost like a film star but was very immature and somewhat self-centered, more interested in being buddies with Maya and Bailey than being a mother. This is particularly evident when the children lived with her and her boyfriend in St. Louis. The boyfriend raped 8 year old Maya and threatened to kill Bailey if she tells anyone. The isolation that she felt during the rape and its aftermath is deeply felt as she withdraws into herself unable to trust her mother to protect her.
Maya continued to feel isolated even after the boyfriend was arrested and put to trial. He was released after a year only to be found dead under mysterious circumstances (possibly caused by her uncles). However this does not give Angelou any release as she was rendered mute for five years from the trauma.
Despite the trauma that Angelou endured from her parents, she encounters love and support from her grandmother and brother, Bailey. (Bailey encourages Maya to come forward about the rape despite the threats to his life). But even they can't shield children from racism. Racism is prominently felt throughout the book in different passages that reveal the cruelty of the bigots around Angelou and her family.
Three "powhitetrash" girls mocked and displayed vulgar gestures to Angelou's grandmother. Her disabled Uncle Willie was chased by Ku Klux Klan members only to find safety in a potato and onion bin. A white dentist refused to treat Maya's teeth which Angelou envisions a dramatic confrontation in which Momma Henderson confounds the dentist and makes him change his ways. (In reality she had to remind him of a debt he owed her, but Angelou always liked her version better.) In another passage, a white professor gave a graduation speech which basically tells the mostly black audience that they will never be good at anything but in sports. During his speech, Maya felt ashamed and embarrassed at her race but then became defiant determined to prove him wrong.
The struggles within her family and from the racism outside would lead most people to despair, but Angelou discovered her strength through a love of reading and learning. She writes that William Shakespeare is her "first white love" as she discovered his works at a young age. After that she recognizes the transformation that reading provides for her and a talent for writing. Angelou's writing suggested that her love of reading even proved miraculous at times.
After her selective muteness, Maya bonded with Mrs. Flowers, a Stamps intellectual who offered Maya poems and books to read. This connection to her love of reading, freed Maya from the trauma of her rape and allowed her to read a poem aloud in school.
Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings captured a troubled childhood but did so with humor, beauty, and strength found in a love of family and learning. She turned a difficult background into a work of triumph.
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