one of his characters his conviction that race is
one of several variables. Cleo states, “But this isn’t
just a problem of race.... It is a ghetto problem
involving a class of people with different cultures
and traditions at a different level of education”
(80). Also significant, Himes unabashedly points
out that this class, culture, and educational dif-
ference exists as well between middle- and lower-
class blacks.
However, If He Hollers Let Him Go is not merely
a political diatribe or pseudosociological report. It
is filled with rich literary allusions and integration
of African-American folklore—music and tales.
For example, in the novel Himes creates scenes
of storytelling and signifying games among his
crew members (who have such interesting names
as Peaches, Zula Mae, Arkansas, and Pigmeat)
that resonate with ZORA NEALE HURSTON’s porch
scenes in MULES AND MEN and THEIR EYES WERE
WATCHING! GOD.
As JAMES BALDWIN noted in discussing Himes’s
accomplishments, If He Hollers Let Him Go is “one
of those books for which it is difficult to find any
satisfactory classification: not a good novel but
more than a tract, relentlessly honest, and carried
by the fury and the pain of the man who wrote
it” (3).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baldwin, James. “History as Nightmare.” In The Criti-
cal Response to Chester Himes, edited by Charles L.
P. Silet, 3–5. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
1999.
Himes, Chester. My Life of Absurdity: The Autobiogra-
phy of Chester Himes, vol. II. New York: Doubleday
& Company, 1976.
———. The Quality of Hurt: The Autobiography of
Chester Himes, vol. I. New York: Doubleday &
Company, 1972.
Lee, Robert, A. “Violence Real and Imagined: The
Novels of Chester Himes.” In The Critical Response
to Chester Himes, edited by Charles L. P. Si1et, 65–
- Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1999.
Rosenblatt, Roger. Black Fiction. Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1974.
Wilfred D. SamuelsI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Maya Angelou (1970)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) is the first
of a series of six books through which poet, actress,
and dancer MAYA ANGELOU records her life. When
Robert Loomis, her eventual Random House edi-
tor, challenged her to write her autobiography as
literature, Angelou took him seriously. This first
book covers 16 years of Angelou’s life, focusing
largely on her early life in segregated, poverty-rid-
den Stamps, Arkansas, and her teenage years in
San Francisco and San Diego. When her parents’
marriage ends, Maya and Bailey, her slightly older
brother, are sent, address-tagged and alone, across
the country by train from Long Beach, California,
to their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson,
in Stamps, Arkansas. Within a few years of being
taken in by Henderson, Angelou and Bailey are
then reclaimed by their mother, Vivienne Bax-
ter, and sent back to St. Louis. When raped at age
eight by her mother’s boyfriend, Angelou, who was
warned not to tell, subsequently confides in Bailey,
who quickly informs the family. After spending
only one day in jail, the molester was released and
was found dead in a nearby parking lot the next
day; he apparently had been kicked to death. The
traumatized Angelou believes that her voice, and
perhaps her relatives, caused her victimizer to lose
his life. Thereafter, she chooses not to speak to any-
one other than Bailey for many years to come.
Returning to live with her grandmother, Annie
Henderson, and Uncle Willie in Stamps, Ange-
lou begins to read prodigiously, memorizes large
amounts of poetry, and is eventually encouraged to
speak with the help of her dedicated teacher, Mrs.
Flowers. After graduating from Lafayette Coun-
try Training School at age 14, Angelou and Bailey
rejoin their mother in San Francisco. Soon after,
Maya spends her summer in Southern California
with her father and his lover, Dolores. However,
after being stabbed during a jaunt into Mexico,
she avoids her father’s wrath by going to live in a
car junkyard with a tight-knit band of Mexican,
Negro, and white runaways. There, accepted and
protected by this racially mixed group, she begins
to understand the concept of universal brother-
hood. Returning to San Francisco, she attends highI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 265