Book Review — “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou

This book rightfully sits among the books you have to read before you die!

Maya Angelou tells the story of her childhood: a childhood full of hardships and calamities, but also filled with the beauty and innocence of childhood. She tells the story of her rushed childhood, in a world that did not give her the chance nor the time to live a proper one. Still, she can appreciate it. And still, she can tell it to us in all of its beauty and ugliness.

This story is not only Maya’s story. It’s a story of every child that felt not wanted by her parents. It’s the story of every child to whom racism and segregation don’t make any sense, because they really don’t. It’s the story of every child struggling to find its place in a world that seems not to want her. A world where your parents, your society, and sometimes even your God seem not to want you. Yet, Maya was still able to find beauty in this world: in the smells of her grandma’s little grocery store, in the hugeness of her father’s physique, in the songs and prayers that her people raise faithfully to God in the church, in the love that her mother holds for her in her own special way, in the role model she saw in her older brother.

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a great look into the American society at the start of the 20th Century through the eyes of an extremely intelligent little girl, who has lost the innocence of childhood early, in an unforgiving world.

4 / 5.