“Because I was really white and because a cruel fairy stepmother, who was understandably jealous of my beauty, had turned me into a too-big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil” (pg. 3). I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou’s autobiography of her early life, growing into a young woman, and finding herself in the process. Maya Angelou grew up in the time of Segregation, trying to discover who she was separated from the rest of the world. With only her brother Bailey, and her grandmother, “Momma,” to take solace in, for most of her early life she felt as though she had no friends. The title is a metaphor. Angelou is the caged bird and she sings because she found …show more content…
She always had her grandmother and her brother, though, to make her happy. When she was around eight or nine, she discovered another outlet: reading. She loved reading William Shakespeare, but felt bad because he was a white man. Additionally, not only did she struggle with being African American, she was forced to grow up being called ugly, while she had a beautiful and graceful brother, Bailey. Bailey is described as: “small, graceful and smooth… he was lauded for his velvet-black skin. His hair fell down in black curls” (pg. 22). Maya depended on Bailey from a very young age. Bailey is protective and independent, but still seeks desperate approval from those he loves. The main figure in her life to guide her was her grandmother, whom she called “Momma.” Momma was greatly respected in Stamps, for she was African American with an exceptionally successful business. She knew how to win a battle in silence, and run a Caucasian person out of town with a few simple words. With Bailey and Momma, Maya was safe. All of that changed when the siblings went to live with their mother in St. Louis. There, they meet dozens of crime figures, including Mr. Freeman, their mother’s boyfriend. At only eight years old, Maya does not understand the idea of rape until she ends up in the hospital. Mr. Freeman is later shot and killed. When they return to Stamps, Bailey is heartbroken, for he
However, her son and son’s wife treat her indifferent throughout the narration “Bailey didn’t look up from his reading so she wheeled around then and faced the children’s mother, a young woman in slacks, whose face was as broad and innocent as a
From the first page, Flannery O’Connor describes his mother by making sure her characterization skills fulfilled to the max. Julian’s mother comes off as a strong and hard-headed woman who has the mindset that Negroes are inferior to whites. “’They were better off when they were [slaves],’ she said…. They should rise but on their own side of the fence.’ ”
Marguerite Annie Johnson was born on April 4, 1928. Her beloved brother, Bailey, less than two years her senior, referred to her as, “My or Mya Sister”, and she became known as Maya. When she was three her parents divorced, and her father placed both her and her brother on a train to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with his mother. Stamps was a highly segregated small southern town. Their grandmother, Annie Johnson, owned a small general store that sold basic commodities to mainly black customers.
Although the daughter of Bailey and the grandmothers granddaughter, is cute, she's just plain nasty to everybody, as we learn pretty early on in the story from the way she treats her grandmother: "She wouldn't stay at home for a million bucks," June star said. "Afraid she'd miss something. She has to go everywhere we go" (O’Connor 7). The grandmother was opposed to going where her son wanted to go, and she too is demanding just like her granddaughter. The grandmother knew that her son would no longer listen to her, so she got the children to plead her case.
Bailey is a troublemaker at both houses, but is loved by everyone. During one summer at the farm, Ethan meets Hannah. He eventually asks Hannah to be his girlfriend, she says yes, and Bailey approves the girl as she is constantly petting him. Back at the boy’s house, Bailey saves Ethan from arson. He suffers a leg injury, which ends his high school football career.
Although she had children, sometimes many, she was completely desexualized. She "belonged" to the white family, though it was rarely stated. She had no black friends; the white family was her entire world.” She is also stereotypically uneducated, though good at managing the household and teaching the white children. However, historians Kimberly Wallace-Stevens and Cheryl Thurber argue that this image is a “one dimensional caricature” which “proslavery authors use as a symbol of racial harmony within the slave system”.
The lives of Murray’s grandparents differed greatly. Cornelia Smith was born into slavery by a white man. She had many features from her father and in many ways looked white. This fact made it impossible for her family to deny her as kin.
III. a. Maya Angelou was an avid writer, speaker, activist and teacher. As a result of the many hardships that she suffered while growing up as a poor black woman in the south she has used her own experiences as the subject matter of her written work. In doing this she effectively shows how she was able to overcome her personal obstacles. Her autobiography “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970) tells the story of her life and how she overcame and moved forward triumphantly in spite of her circumstances.
A father is meant to care for his children, be by their side, and provide them with nurture. These qualities of a father are not what we see in Bailey. Bailey had invited Maya to come to southern California to stay with him, but after she arrives, he continually pits her against Dolores, his young girlfriend. We see this action from Dad Bailey and it starts when he says to Maya, “Well that’s life” when Maya discusses her opinions towards Dad Bailey’s girlfriend. This goes back to what I was saying about Dad Bailey’s failure as a father as instead of clearing the situation between Maya and Dolores, he tells Maya to forget about it and says that rude acts and violence are a part of life and you need to live with it.
Maya Angelou recalls the first seventeen years of her life, discussing her unsettling childhood in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Maya and Bailey were sent from California to the segregated South to live with their grandmother, Momma. At the age of eight, Maya went to stay with her mother in St. Louis, where she was sexually abused and raped by her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freeman. Maya confronts these traumatic events of her childhood and explores the evolution of her own strong identity. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement, caused by these incidents of sexual abuse, are mediated through her love for literature.
Although the situation about racism in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is the same as the first novel, the dynamic of it all is entirely flipped. The main character, Maya, lives with her brother, Bailey, grandmother,
She said “I wouldn’t look at either of them. Momma hadn’t thought that taking off my dress in front of Mrs. Flowers would kill me stone dead”. Even though Maya was not with anyone threatening she still felt nervous. No matter how old she got, whether she was 8 years old or 16 years old, the feeling of uneasiness stayed with her the rest of her life. Mr. Freeman took advantage of Maya’s innocence and stole her ability to be trusting of
The most important event of the situation stemmed from Maya’s intense anger toward the girls for “aping” her grandmother. The girls pretended to be apes and called out Momma while doing so which made Maya want to “throw a handful of black pepper in their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods (30). Maya also questioned how Momma could stay quiet and bear the cruelness, and then refer to the girls as “Miz” as they were leaving. Momma assured a young Maya with her silence that not reacting to such behavior is to win. This lesson of not letting others’ judgements effect you was an important one for Maya to learn.
Having done so, she goes on to highlight the ‘womanist’ culture. Afro-American tradition, for Mama, is symbolized by churn. It is a tradition of bonding, of mutual nurturance. Similarly, the symbol of quilt for Mama is not just a utilitarian item but a living tradition. Alice Walker, in fact, uses the imagery of the quilt to suggest what womanism is all about.
In the poems “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar and “Caged Bird” by Maya Angelou, both portray captive birds that sing. However in “Sympathy”, the bird pleads with god for freedom, whereas in “Caged Bird” the captive bird calls for help from a free bird. In “Sympathy” the bird knows what freedom feels like since there was a time where the bird was once free, but now is trapped. In the first stanza the use of imagery revealed how freedom felt before the bird was caged.