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Resilience From Racism In I Know Why The Caged Birds Sing

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Resilience from Racism
In Maya Angelou’s first autobiographical piece, “I know why the caged birds sing,” Maya encountered many social issues regarding her being an African American living in the small town of Stamps, Arkansas. In the 1930s, African Americans made up twenty percent of the population but were represented as the fifty-four percent of the unemployed, due to the major illiteracy of blacks, in that era. In the autobiography “I know why the caged birds sing,” Maya Angelou tells a story of her own life, as an African American, living in the 1930s, during the time of black segregation. Since a very young age, Maya has experienced the effects of racism and segregation in America. She has an indoctrinated mindset that whites are beautiful and that she is just a black girl trapped in a living nightmare, nad that if she wasn’t a white girl, she wasn’t beautiful. …show more content…

We could see this through how Maya expresses her statement. When Maya sees Mrs. Bertha Flowers, she sees her as the epitome of the richest black stating on how “She was was our side’s answer to the richest white woman in town” (Angelou, 6). Maya makes this statement for the reason that since society portrays whites as superior and perfect, during her time, she could never imagined to meet a “perfect black”. Maya makes this statement as if she believes that Mrs. Flowers could be the character that she desires to become in her life, as a black person living in the time of black segregation, where racism is

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Other than that she was An author, poet , screenwriter, etc. With being African American, Maya had experience with first hand racial prejudices and discrimination in Arkansas, where

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On page 247 it says,"I was never again to sense myself to solidly outside the pale of the human race. " This is showing that Maya is seeing herself as a member of society and not an outcast. It also shows Maya needs to be reliable because everyone is counting on her to do her own job. This also includes the dance pub, there Maya

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She is aware of how treat her compared to a white little girl. She starts to think that the idea of being beautiful is to have fair skin with long blonde hair. As a young child her confidence is shattered because she sees herself as fat, black girl that is stuck in a nightmare. She believed that beauty meant white beauty. Although Stamps, Arkansas is very strict with segregation, young Maya is not for sure if white people even exists.

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On example of this critique can be seen in Maya’s meeting with Mrs. Bertha Flowers. Angelou presents the older black woman as a direct opposite of young Maya, stressing that Mrs. Flowers rules both her words and body. “She had the grace of control to appear warm in the coldest weather, and on the Arkansas summer days it seemed she had a private breeze which swirled around, cooling her” (Angelou 77). Mrs. Flowers makes Maya proud to be black, and claims that she is more beautiful and “just as refined as whitefolks in movies and books” (Angelou 79). Although Maya begins to respect and admire the black female body, the white body still provide her standard for beauty, and Angelou pokes fun at the literary writing that whitens Maya’s view of Bertha Flowers and

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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Book Review It is not an unknown fact that the world has seen many accounts of racial prejudice and how that prejudice leads to purification. The way visible differences make men turn upon one another. It is a thought provoking idea, for if men turn on each other then what would be the fate of females, for the behaviour of women is far crueler. Set in the 1930s, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, gives a personal, yet honest look at racial prejudice in the United States of America towards the black minority. Born Marguerite Annie Johnson, Maya Angelou, the young protagonist, is sent with her older brother Bailey, to live with their grandmother in the racially segregated, southern town of Stamps,

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1215 Words | 5 Pages

While children are growing up, they often dream of becoming high-paying doctors who live in a two-story house with a white picket fence. However, for Marguerite Johnson, the main character in Maya Angelou’s memoir about her childhood, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, her dreams were quite different. Marguerite, also known as Maya, dreamed of having beautiful long blonde hair and baby blue eyes like all the white girls in Stamps, Arkansas. The only way Maya was able to escape the racism around her was to imagine her life as a “sweet little white girl who is everybody’s dream of what is right in the world” (Angelou 4).

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In the poem, Angelou stands up against the people that have torn her down because of her race and femininity. “You may kill me with your hatefulness” (Angelou 23), she tells them, “But still, like air, I’ll rise” (Angelou 24). Maya Angelou is displaying excellence in her poem by achieving her highest potential as an African American woman, regardless of the degrading comments people make about her. Maya Angelou’s poem teaches its readers to accept the person they are, no matter what people, or society, think of

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Angelou had used anecdotes to describe the situations when Maya had been discriminated by her colour and appearance by the White Americans. Maya and Momma had to go to the dentist because Maya had two rotten teeth. However there were no Negro dentist in her area, and the nearest Negro dentist was in Texarkana which was far. So Momma had decided to go to Dr. Lincoln's since he owned her a favour from the past. Momma talked to Dr. Lincoln about Maya’s tooth problem and he replied “‘Annie, you know that I don’t treat nigra, colored people.’

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The second female African American role model in Maya’s life is her actual mother, Vivian. In the beginning of the novel it seems as if Maya’s mother is absent. In fact, Maya and her brother believe that their mother is dead until one Christmas presents show up from their mother. When Maya and Bailey see their mother for the first time, they realize that see is absolutely beautiful.

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In her autobiographies, Maya Angelou talks about having two mothers, her grandmother who she called Momma and Vivian, her biological mother. She also talks about how her son also has “two mothers”, herself and her mother Vivian (Siphokazi 37-38). This is important because it shows how different African American family dynamics are. They rely on extended family and their own community instead of being a nuclear household that strictly relies on one father and mother to raise and provide for children’s needs (Siphokazi 37-38). Furthermore, the idea of family and diaspora come into play heavily in Maya’s life.

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During Maya’s childhood, she was segregated by white people to the point where she started to believe that white people were not real. She felt sufficient enough being loved by Bailey. When Maya’s father came and took her and Bailey back to their mother’s home in St. Louis, her life began to fall apart. She liked being held by the mother's boyfriend (Mr. Freeman) and she was too young and innocent to recognize the possible danger which ultimately resulted in the brutal rape at such a tender age. She blamed herself for allowing Mr. Freeman to hold her before he supposively raped her.

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Maya Angelou worked as a professor at Wake Forest University, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, from 1991 to 2014. As an African American women, one whose life was full of racial discrimination and gender inequality, she had plenty of experience and wisdom to share with her students. During her time working at the university, she taught a variety of humanities courses such as “World Poetry in Dramatic Performance,” “Race, Politics and Literature,” “African Culture and Impact on U.S.,” and “Race in the Southern Experience” (Wake Forest University,

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People can become despised and threatened for interacting with others from different races. People start to hate one another based on the stereotypes of other’s actions. Blacks think that all Whites are evil based on the actions of radical Whites. Because of racial issues, Jim Crow Laws were implemented and it drastically affected Maya’s life. Maya was denied services due to her race and wasn’t taken seriously in academics until she moved to California where segregation isn’t allowed.

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Through discriminatory experiences, Maya begins to think that all black people are discriminated against and all white people are racist towards blacks also white people having more rights and freedom. Racism is a very important issue in the world today. Many people come across an act of racism and tend to ignore or even join in and support the cause. People have been racist to one another for years and years and to this day it still continues. In Caged Bird, there were many notable examples of Racism, one of which was...

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Growing up and reading exciting comics about heroes saving the day, she felt restricted by the laws of society and the way she was supposed to act as a young lady. She felt that she could not be as heroic as the boys in the comics she read, so she felt just as trapped by her gender as she does her race. Maya wished that she could be like the other boys and be the hero for once. Also, at one point in the book, she believes that she is a lesbian. She struggles to discover more about her own sexual preferences and feels trapped by the idea of “turning into a lesbian”.

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