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As a child, Maya encounters the bruising effects of racism and segregation in America. She lives in Stamps, Arkansas, a town segregated to the point that as a young girl, Maya isn’t sure that white people even exist. As she grows up, her confrontations with racism become more blatant and more personal. For instance, at her eighth grade graduation, a white speaker talks to her in a condescending tone, her white boss calls her Mary, knowing full-well her name. And perhaps the most public example is when a white dentist refuses to provide her service. Even worse, Maya sees how well white girls are treated. She begins to believe that the only way to be treated well is to be beautiful and the only way to be beautiful is to be a blonde-haired, paled-skinned, blue-eyed darling girl.

This story is rich with character as Maya is surrounded by those who live under the rules of the South.   The feelings portrayed are raw, and the role of a child’s imagination is poignant—magnificently done.  She manages to bring out aspects beyond those of a young girl’s private thoughts through real events like Joe Louis’s world championship boxing match. A clear victory for blacks in the eyes of the black community, but an example of the white man’s media failing to publicly recognized an African American as a hero. Louis’ victory also shows the desperate, lonely nature of the black community’s hope for vindication.

Maya begins to learn that she and her family are meant to be held back by a fearful public. Limited in what they can do to better themselves—demeaned for even trying.  “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a story about the pressures of living in a thoroughly racist society and how profoundly such a society shapes the character of an individual and the dynamics of a family.  It is a story of how one girl strived to surmount such pressures.

Quote from
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
“What sets one Southern town apart from another, or from a Northern town or hamlet, or city high-rise?  The answer must be the experience shared between the unknowing majority (it) and the knowing minority (you).  All of childhood’s unanswered questions must finally be passed back to the town and answered there.”