Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
written by Maya Angelou
published by Bantam Books

find it here: (affiliate links) Barnes & Noble, Amazon, iBooks, Book Depository, Goodreads

Did I enjoy this book: In honor of the recently departed poet, artist, singer, activist, and beautiful soul, Maya Angelou, I’m offering this review of one of my all time favorite stories.

I Know Why the Caged Bird sings is unforgettable. Angelou doesn’t just tell stories she changes lives. She touches souls. And she reshapes our nation for the better.

In this book she deals with literacy, persistence, personal dignity, and success against impossible odds.

I love how she tells a story of survival without anger, blame, or excuses. It’s hard to comprehend how she’s able to write with such honesty about topics that, when this book was released, were hardly spoken of in private much less public.

“While I was writing the book, I stayed half drunk in the afternoon and cried all night.” Yet she kept writing. And readers of all generations are better off because she did. God bless you, Maya Angelou. Rest in peace.

Would I recommend it: Absolutely.

About the book – from Goodreads: Maya Angelou’s six volumes of autobiography are a testament to the talents and resilience of this extraordinary writer. Loving the world, she also knows its cruelty. As a Black woman she has known discrimination and extreme poverty, but also hope, joy, achievement and celebration. In this first volume of her six books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the American south of the 1930s. She learns the power of the white folks at the other end of town and suffers the terrible trauma of rape by her mother’s lover.

‘I write about being a Black American woman, however, I am always talking about what it’s like to be a human being. This is how we are, what makes us laugh, and this is how we fall and how we somehow, amazingly, stand up again.’ — Maya Angelou