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 five books of autobiography, Maya Angelou beautifully evokes her childhood with her grandmother in the Amercian 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
‘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
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Reviews
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity
A brilliant writer, a fierce friend and a truly phenomenal woman
'There's currently a glut of true-life stories written by survivors of abuse, but this inspirational 1969 book is one of the first - and the best...[it] is testament to the immense strength of this extraordinary woman
She moved through the world with unshakeable calm, confidence and a fierce grace . . . She will always be the rainbow in my clouds
A trailblazer in decolonial, anti-racist movements and intersectional feminism, memoirist, poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou is a powerhouse of a woman
I know that not since the days of my childhood, when people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself more moved
Verve, nerve, and joy in her own talents effervesce throughout this book
Its humour, even in the face of appalling discrimination, is robust. Autobiographical writing at its very best
She was important in so many ways. She launched African American women writing in the United States. She was generous to a fault. She had nineteen talents - used ten. And was a real original. There is no duplicate
The poems and stories she wrote . . . were gifts of wisdom and wit, courage and grace