Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
(New York: Random House, 1970)In a 1977 interview with Jeffrey M. Elliot, Maya Angelou revealed that “I decided
many years ago to invent myself. I had obviously been invented by someone else—
by a whole society—and I didn’t like their invention. I just didn’t. So I continued
to invent myself every day.”
Born Marguerite Annie Johnson on 4 April 1928 in St. Louis, Missouri, and
raised primarily in Stamps, Arkansas, by her grandmother, Angelou continued to
define and invent herself anew in response to the abuse and hardship she faced
growing up black and female in the South during the Jim Crow era. Adding to the
injury of racism were feelings of displacement, “the rust on the razor that threatens
the throat,” related to a broken home, separation from her parents, and insecurity
about her looks. Angelou was raped as a child and became an unwed mother in
her teens. Despite these experiences, she channeled her talents to find success as a
dancer and singer performing Off Broadway and touring Europe and as an Emmy-
nominated actress, teacher, and acclaimed memoirist and poet. In her life and writ-
ing, she provides an enduring testament to human resiliency and the ability not only
to survive but also to rise above and overcome difficult circumstances.
Angelou recounts her childhood in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970),
the first volume of her autobiography and her most popular work. Her divorced
parents, Vivian Baxter and Bailey Johnson, shuttled her and older brother Bailey
back and forth between St. Louis and Stamps, where they were cared for by
their paternal grandmother, Annie “Momma” Henderson, who owned the only
African American general store in town. Arkansas became Angelou’s permanent
home when she was three. During a visit with her mother in Chicago when
she was seven, Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend. After she named
her rapist and endured his trial, her attacker was found murdered—presumably
by her uncles. Feeling responsible for the death, Angelou did not speak for five
years, her silence a manifestation of guilt, insecurity, and feelings of worthless-
ness. Against these early difficulties, however, Angelou sets in her memoir the
positive and life-affirming qualities embodied by her grandmother and by Afri-
can American cultural traditions. Returned to her grandmother after her rape,
Angelou eventually regained her speech and spirit, also discovering what would
become a life-long passion for writing and reading. This renewal, however, was
threatened by a move with her mother and brother to San Francisco where she
struggled again to find acceptance. The work also describes her job as the first
African American streetcar conductor and a growing passion for drama and
dance. It ends with the birth of her son, Guy, a week after she graduated from
Mission High School at age sixteen.
Angelou continues the story of her life in subsequent books. Gather Together
in My Name (1974) picks up shortly after I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings leaves
off, depicting the bleakest period recounted in her autobiographical works. In
contrast to the sense of optimism that pervades the end of I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings are descriptions of her guilt over having a child outside of marriage