I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Description:

Theme:

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, explores the theme of racism, self-acceptance, and belonging. It conveys a message of hope and of the power of self-expression

Summary:

The book chronicles her life from age 3 through age 16, recounting an unsettled and sometimes traumatic childhood that included rape and racism.

It became one of the most widely read and taught books written by an African American woman.It is a protest poem that voices out the inequality between black and white Americans. It illustrates the oppression of the Blacks in contrast with the freedom of the Whites during Segregation in American history.

Famous Quotes:

Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with shades of deeper meaning.

Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait.

Language is man’s way of communicating with his fellow man and it is language alone which separates him from the lower animals.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

He was a simple man who had no inferiority complex about his lack of education, and even more amazing no superiority complex because he had succeeded despite that lack.

The city became for me the ideal of what I wanted to be as a grown-up. Friendly, but never gushing, cool but not frigid or distant, distinguished without the awful stiffness.

To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excruciating beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision

Although I had no regrets, I told myself sadly that growing up was not the painless process one would have thought it to be.

Beautiful lines:

If you’re for the right thing, you do it without thinking.

Hoping for the best, prepared for the worst, and unsurprised by anything in between.

She comprehended the perversity of life, that in the struggle lies the joy

Can’t Do is like Don’t Care. Neither of them have a home.

I was basically good. Not understood, and not even liked, but even so, just, and better than just. I was merciful.

There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.

Childhood’s logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute)

Anything that works against you can also work for you once you understand the Principle of Reverse.

Pursue the things you love doing, and then do them so well that people can’t take their eyes off you.

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