I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: Book Analysis

I had a lot of fun reading all these essays that my classmates clearly put a lot of thought into. There were definitely a few topics that almost all my peers addressed and that was the idea of humility and empathy that arises from reading, I Know why the Caged Bird Sings. As Andrew states, “Through her words, she helped me understand the pain, suffering and fear that was endured by her people. It was unlike any history book I had ever read. I had finally understood on an emotional level that there were real people experiencing these events.”. In essence, rather than reading a history textbook or listening to a history teacher drone on, books like this really allow the reader to understand exactly what someone has gone through. Like Jaime states,” During the years of my education, I felt as though I knew a lot about how it was for African American’s to live during this time period, but I realize that I did not know nearly as much as I thought I

As Jaime states, “While reviewing the list of historical figures, times, and places that you had asked to explain the most we had known about each, I was embarrassed to say that many of them I did not know”. However, as we went through this unit, I felt myself growing to understand the purpose of the unit. While, it is definitely good to know some important dates and people for history, it is more important to understand why we study history. As my peers now know, the answer to this question is extremely nuanced. Andrew put it well when he states, “we must fight the lazy thought patterns that we tend to fall into and work hard with persistence when studying history, attempting to temporarily do away with the biases that we hold in search of true historical knowledge”. In other words, we need to change the way we learn history in order to retain more knowledge and be able to use that in our everyday