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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Identity Essay

999 Words4 Pages

People throughout their lives are constantly discovering who they are and who they want to grow into. The same statement accurately describes Maya Johnson, a strong woman who wrote about her life in her autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As a little girl, her mother’s ex-boyfriend raped and she had to rediscover herself whilst navigating through the grim veil of trauma - a process that burdened her for many years. Throughout her life, she encountered many different people, some good, others bad, but they each helped her eventually discover her identity. ‘Identity’ is how people define themselves as a human being, and, therefore, nobody else can dictate it. Maya’s experiences throughout her childhood and “adulthood” convey the idea that nobody can dictate someone else’s identity except the person themselves. Maya’s experiences throughout her childhood show the idea that nobody can dictate someone else’s identity except the person themselves. At only eight years old, her mother’s ex-boyfriend molested and raped her. During his trial, Maya lied about what he had done and denied that he’d ever touched her before he actually raped her. Sometime later, a police officer showed up to her grandmother’s home and announced that Mr. Freeman, her rapist, had perished. This news thoroughly disturbed Maya; she believed that her words had killed a man. On page 87, she explained that “if I [she] talked to anyone else that person might die too. Just my [her] breath, carrying my [her] words out, might poison …show more content…

As a very young girl, her mother’s ex-boyfriend molested and raped her. Her rape took up a big part of her life, as it never really completely left her. Early on in her life, she branded herself as a bad person, but as she grew and matured, she realized she no longer identified as a bad person, but rather a strong, independent, intelligent woman who takes pride in her black

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in which she responds with “Yes.” Mr. Freeman then says “If you ever tell anyone what we did, I’ll have to kill Bailey.” She loves Bailey and didn’t want him to get killed, so she stayed quiet. If someone was put in Maya’s situation, they’d want to tell someone, but the risk of losing a loved one may not be worth the risk. Maya writing this book is a way for her to speak out about what she had gone through and to find her voice that she had once

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I said No.” This shows us Maya thinks how she thinks other people want her to think, and not how she herself would have answered. This leads us to believe that maya is not confident in herself to make the right decisions on her own and trusts the thoughts more than her own. As a child when you are the most impressionable, it is not wise to let a child rely off of someone else’s decision making skills and the child would become to dependant on others. Also in this book it

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However, in the second half of the quote Maya states, “But the high heels alone are so uncomfortable I can only imagine how painful the rest of the act would be.” This piece of evidence displays Maya feels uncomfortable wearing this “mask” concealing parts of herself, faking her identity in order to make her mother proud of the daughter she has become; Maya cannot imagine her whole life to be like this. This quote actively displays the battle between being herself vs making her parents proud, Maya wants the both of these worlds but struggles to identify what she wants herself, or who she is; Maya understands the responsibility and the high standards she is expected to have in order to bring respect in her household and towards her parents. Maya teaches readers later on in the novel that she will be herself at the end of the day even in the circumstances with her parents, attending the university she wants to attend and pursue her career in film and disobeying her parents which leads to Maya getting kicked out. Maya from Love, Hate and Other Filters by Samira Ahmed is the only character who truly makes the book worth

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