I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
(Maya Angelou)

Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Anne Johnson in Missouri in 1928. When her older brother was young, he could not say her name and so “Maya” is how she was known. Maya and her siblings were bounced around between homes through their childhood and adolescence due to their parents’ divorce, spending some time in Arkansas with their grandmother and then to California with their mother.

Maya became invested in the civil rights movement when she was only fifteen years old and ended up becoming the first African American streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Maya has received praise and recognition from such powerful political and civil rights leaders such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gerald Ford, and Jimmy Carter and was also commissioned by Bill Clinton to write a poem, called “On the Pulse of Morning”, for his presidential inauguration in 1993.

Throughout Angelou’s life, she expressed her creativity in writing, film, and on the stage, all three of which she earned critical acclaim for. As Maya often spoke of her rather intense upbringing, she was urged to write an autobiography which turned into a series of autobiographies of which “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” was the first and the most well-known.

It is often used as an accompaniment in English courses when studying texts that involve racism and fetched Angelou the National Book Award. Some schools have removed “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” from their reading lists because they feel the content is too mature for school-aged readers, as Maya is quite candid in discussing her experiences with racism and rape.

Angelou’s autobiographies have proved a great record of civil rights issues in the country, and she will forever live in infamy due to the strides she made in the civil rights movement.