Review:I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Dr. Maya Angelou’s memoir, I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, is a courageous and a deeply human story of pain, troubled childhood, ache of abandonment, longing, trauma, guilt, resentment, endurance and love.

She’s only three when she’s sent, along with her brother Bailey who is four, to a ‘musty little town’ of segregated Stamps, Arkansas following their parents’ divorce. Needless to mention, they travel by themselves, wearing tags on their wrists which read, “To Whom It May Concern”. When they reach the segregated southern part of the journey, she writes, passengers who feel sorry for the “poor little motherless darlings” ply them with cold fried chicken and potato salad.

At Stamps they live at the rear of a Store with their grandma, Sister Henderson- whom she describes as a deeply devoted Christian- and their crippled uncle, Willie. They adapt to the Southern life quite fast and soon they start to call their grandma, ‘Momma.’

As a young girl, Maya has a low sense of self- confidence. She feels ugly, inadequate and unwanted. She does not like her physique, her hair which she calls a ‘kinky mass’, and her skin colour. According to her, whiteness is aspirational, it is ‘…everybody’s dream of what was right with the world.” She longs to wake up from the black ugly dream one day. Notably, amid all these, Maya has Bailey, whom she deeply adores. She says of him, “my kingdom come…the concept of an unshakeable God.” Perhaps because Bailey has so far been the only constant in her life. Perhaps because he loves her so much despite her feeling “…big, elbowy, and grating …with a head covered with black steel wool.”

At eight and back with her mother, Maya is raped by her mother’s lover, Mr. Freeman. She describes the act of rape as on an eight-year old body as 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”p.78. Mr. Freeman is sentenced to a year and a day but he secures release through his lawyer later that day. In a twist of a fate, he’s to found dead behind a slaughterhouse. “..Seems like he was dropped there. Some say he was kicked to death.”P.86

The news of Mr. Freeman’s death disturbs Maya so much that she decides to talk to no one else but Bailey, henceforth. She is scared of the power of her voice and feels that perhaps if she talks to anyone, that person might end up dying too. This incident also challenges her belief on Bailey as being invincible especially from how shaken he is by the death.  She realizes that even though her brother loves hers so much, he is helpless. Not so long after this, Maya and Bailey return to Stamps and Maya is unsure of the basis of this return, that is, whether they were sent for or the family at the North had had enough of her muteness.

I was particularly struck by Maya Angelou’s keenness as a child. In this memoir, she comes across less as a character and more as a distant observer, a remove. She is aware of Black displacement but what seems to incense her more it the blacks’ resignation to their fate; their seeming comfort with their space “…the idea came to me that my people may be a race of masochists and that not only was it our fate to live the poorest roughest life, but that we liked it like that.”  She does not also understand these people’s obsession with God and worship “…people whose history and future were threatened each day by extinction considered that it was only by divine intervention that they were able to live at all. …they basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden” when it’s clear to her that the same God must be White, or what else explains why it’s the whites that are affluent? She seems to believe however that the makeshift churches where her people go to praise and worship in the evenings after long days of tough work, are spaces for emotional release rather than actual worship. According to her, it is the poorest lives that are attributed to God’s will. “..But as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate scale.”

Maya experiences a rather harsh first-hand racial discrimination in the hands of a dentist. She has two cavities and it turns out that there is no Negro dentist in Stamps. The nearest Negro dentist is situated 25 Kilometers away from where they live. Sister Annie Henderson opts to take her to Dr. Lincoln’s, a white dentist, who owes her a favour. So excruciating is Maya’s pain that pain relievers such as aspirin and cloves prove to be ineffective. Dr. Lincoln is however unmoved and remains adamant on his principle to not to treat colored people. “…my policy is I don’t treat colored people.”P.188 He goes on to say, “Annie, my policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s.” When her pleas end in futility, Sister Annie Henderson takes Maya to a Negro Dentist at Texarkana where her teeth are extracted.

At sixteen, Maya is worried about her features that don’t look anything like a burgeoning woman’s. Her chest is near-flat, armpits as smooth as her face, her feet big, her legs skinny and her voice deep. It doesn’t help also that she has just read The Well of Loneliness, a book that’s about lesbianism. She’s so scared she thinks she’s evolving into one. Incidentally, her classmate asks her to visit for a sleepover. She gets sight of her breasts as she’s changing into her sleeping gown. This excites Maya and it confirms further her fears that there is something queer about her. A deep desire for clarity is sparked and she decides that the only way to understand herself; her body, is through a sexual experience with a boy. She approaches one. They make love. The experience leaves her with more questions but she decides to leave it to time “…I decided that I would understand it all better by-and-by”. Fortunately or unfortunately, she finds out three weeks later, that she is with a child!

Reading this memoir, there’s no denying that Dr. Maya Angelou was indeed a great story teller. She told this rather sad story in a manner so beautiful that it is totally unputdownable. The book is replete with poetic expressions, humor, imagery and abundant wisdom.

I struggled with Maya’s description of her relationship with her mother, Vivian Baxter that I had to search for interviews on YouTube where she talks about her. In the book, I felt that she was too reasonable and cautious as not to offend.

 I must say that it is outright bravery to bare one’s personal struggles and internal conflicts as Maya does. Reading this memoir, one feels seen and this affirms what she liked to say, “We are more alike than we are unlike!”