In I Know
Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou describes her coming
of age as a precocious but insecure black girl in the American South
during the 1930s and subsequently in California
during the 1940s. Maya’s parents divorce
when she is only three years old and ship Maya and her older brother,
Bailey, to live with their paternal grandmother, Annie Henderson,
in rural Stamps, Arkansas. Annie, whom they call Momma, runs the
only store in the black section of Stamps and becomes the central
moral figure in Maya’s childhood.
As young children, Maya and Bailey struggle with the
pain of having been rejected and abandoned by their parents. Maya
also finds herself tormented by the belief that she is an ugly child
who will never measure up to genteel, white girls. She does not
feel equal to other black children. One Easter Sunday, Maya is unable
to finish reciting a poem in church, and self-consciously feeling
ridiculed and a failure, Maya races from the church crying, laughing,
and wetting herself. Bailey sticks up for Maya when people actually
make fun of her to her face, wielding his charisma to put others
in their place.
Growing up in Stamps, Maya faces a deep-seated
southern racism manifested in wearying daily indignities and terrifying
lynch mobs. She spends time at Momma’s store, observing the cotton-pickers
as they journey to and from work in the fields. When Maya is eight,
her father, of whom she has no memory, arrives in Stamps unexpectedly
and takes her and Bailey to live with their mother, Vivian, in St.
Louis, Missouri. Beautiful and alluring, Vivian lives a wild life
working in gambling parlors. One morning Vivian’s live-in boyfriend,
Mr. Freeman, sexually molests Maya, and he later rapes her. They
go to court and afterward Mr. Freeman is violently murdered, probably
by some the underground criminal associates of Maya’s family.
In the aftermath of these events, Maya endures the guilt
and shame of having been sexually abused. She also believes that
she bears responsibility for Mr. Freeman’s death because she denied
in court that he had molested her prior to the rape. Believing that
she has become a mouthpiece for the devil, Maya stops speaking to everyone
except Bailey. Her mother’s family accepts her silence at first
as temporary post-rape trauma, but they later become frustrated
and angry at what they perceive to be disrespectful behavior.
To Maya’s relief, but Bailey’s regret, Maya and Bailey
return to Stamps to live with Momma. Momma manages to break through Maya’s
silence by introducing her to Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a kind, educated
woman who tells Maya to read works of literature out loud, giving
her books of poetry that help her to regain her voice.
During these years in Stamps, Maya becomes aware of both
the fragility and the strength of her community. She attends a church revival
during which a priest preaches implicitly against white hypocrisy
through his sermon on charity. The spiritual strength gained during
the sermon soon dissipates as the revival crowd walks home past
the honky-tonk party. Maya also observes the entire community listening
to the Joe Louis heavyweight championship boxing match, desperately
longing for him to defend his title against his white opponent.
Maya endures several appalling incidents that teach her
about the insidious nature of racism. At age ten, Maya takes a job
for a white woman who calls Maya “Mary” for her own convenience. Maya
becomes enraged and retaliates by breaking the woman’s fine china.
At Maya’s eighth grade graduation, a white speaker devastates the
proud community by explaining that black students are expected to
become only athletes or servants. When Maya gets a rotten tooth,
Momma takes her to the only dentist in Stamps, a white
man who insults her, saying he’d rather place his hand in a dog’s mouth
than in hers. The last straw comes when Bailey encounters a dead,
rotting black man and witnesses a white man’s satisfaction at seeing
the body. Momma begins to fear for the children’s well-being and saves
money to bring them to Vivian, who now lives in California.
When Maya is thirteen, the family moves to live with
Vivian in Los Angeles and then in Oakland, California.
When Vivian marries Daddy Clidell, a positive father figure, they
move with him to San Francisco, the first city where Maya feels
at home. She spends one summer with her father, Big Bailey, in Los
Angeles and has to put up with his cruel indifference and his hostile
girlfriend, Dolores. After Dolores cuts her in a fight, Maya runs
away and lives for a month with a group of homeless teenagers in
a junkyard. She returns to San Francisco strong and
self-assured. She defies racist hiring policies in wartime San Francisco
to become the first black streetcar conductor at age fifteen. At
sixteen, she hides her pregnancy from her mother and stepfather
for eight months and graduates from high school. The account ends
as Maya begins to feel confident as a mother to her newborn son.
