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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings By Maya Angelou

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Racism is a very serious and terrible experience for someone to go through, so how do people still stay strong to this day? How do people have the strength to speak out about it, and get enough stamina and power to cope with this adversity? Racism has been around the US and the world for such a long time, with examples like the slave trade and slavery, colonialism, and internment camps. Its a wonder how people can survive such terrible ordeals, and it leads one to question how they got through it all. In her memoir, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou narrates her incredible life story to give the long awaited answer. Angelou argues that when people face painful racism, a supportive community helps them to grow stronger despite their …show more content…

It was our people falling… yet another Black man hanging on a tree… It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful” (135). Angelou and the people watching the fight may be disappointed, but Angelou also describes her entire race as groaning in unison. They all feel defeated, almost as if they are Joe Louis fighting in the match. If he loses the match, it would be yet another tragedy to hit Angelou’s race. Additionally, Angelou compares Joe Louis losing the fight to the lynching of a black person, or a white woman abusing her maid. This rich detail highlights how Angelou understands the immense gap between people’s treatment towards a white person and people’s treatment towards a black person, and Angelou endures feeling anguished for her race and her people. Later in the text, as Donleavy insults the crowd at Angelou’s graduation, she remarks: “It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young …show more content…

After Joe Louis wins the heavyweight boxing championship as the first black man to do so, Angelou wonderingly observes the reaction of her community: “Champion of the world. A Black boy. Some Black mother’s son. He was the strongest man in the world. People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate candy bars like Christmas” (136). Angelou marvels at how Joe Louis landed on top, and won the heavyweight boxing championship as a black man. He got through many hardships throughout the fight, and came out of it as the winner. This causes Angelou to feel in awe of him, and her pride for her race is strengthened through Joe Louis’ win. Even though at one point of the fight it may have seemed he was about to lose, he fought hard and strong and eventually triumphed. Additionally, the joy and ecstasy caused by the win is demonstrated through Angelou’s friends and family, who drink and eat foods like they are gods. They feel on top of the world. At another moment, after Henry Reed leads the room in the “Black National Anthem”, Angelou marvels at how her community bounced back from insulting remarks made previously: “We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls… I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race” (184). As Black people throughout history have shown, they are able to survive and surpass all the

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In “Champion of the World” Angelou describes play by plays of the fight and the confidence among the crowd of listeners. “I ain’t worried bout this fight. Joe’s gonna whip that cracker like it’s open season.” Joe Louis represents every African American at the time and Angelou compares his victory to their race overcoming all the horrible things that have happened to them, but then the fight changes and Louis is pinned against the ropes.

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Angelou and Gorman both explain that the United States needed to try harder to unite. For example, in Angelou's poem lines 43-52 say, "So say the Asian, the Hispanic, the Jew the African and Native American, the Sioux, The Catholic, the Muslim, the French, the Greek the Irish, the Rabbi, the Priest, the Sheikh, The Gay, the Straight, the Preacher, The privileged, the homeless, the Teacher. They hear. They all hear the speaking of the Tree. Today, the first and last of every Tree Speaks to humankind.

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Her supporting claims are that Angelou’s writing is convoluted and nonsensical and that To Kill a Mockingbird is a book that efficiently accomplishes what educators are attempting to do with Angelou’s literature. The claims that she uses to support her main claim are claims of fact and value. It is made apparent that Prose finds Angelou’s writing convoluted and nonsensical when Prose writes, “If we want to use Angelou’s work to educate our kids, let’s invite them to parse her language, sentence by sentence; ask them precisely what it means and ask why one would bother obscuring ideas that could be expressed so much more simply and felicitously.” (Prose). This quote implies that American students could not easily analyze Angelou’s work and that her work could be written in less complex and confusing language.

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Once again, Maya Angelou manages to touch our hearts again with her poetic skills in Chapter 19 titled The Champion of the World in her autobiography I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She recalls a time in her life where the African American community gathered at her grandmother's and uncle's store to hear a boxing match via radio. The boxing match was between the former champion Joe Louis and a white boxer. Maya Angelou takes the meaning of a simple boxing match into something more complex; she demonstrates the suffrage of her people fighting against oppression during that time period.

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By alluding to how the white kids would become “Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gaugins,” rather than just saying that the white kids would become legends, Angelou shares her knowledge and proves how she is just as worthy as becoming someone great. While singing the songs of pride to the Negros, Margaret realizes that she is proud of who she is and realizes that she should not throw away the efforts of “Black, known and unknown poets” whose “auctioned pains sustained [them]”. By stating that Blacks had sacrificed their lives for her happiness, she is maturing because she is grateful for what has been done for her to be able to succeed regardless of any obstacles. The little Margaret has changed and has become a matured, angelic poet who is proud to be able to graduate into the Negro

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The importance of having appreciation of our previous generations for what they have done for us and what they have left is highlighted in line 39, “Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave”. Also, “I am the dream and the hope of the slave” (40) shows how Angelou

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