The Pros And Cons Of Using I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The challenge of banning books with sensitive material is understandable, but also shouldn’t be done depending on the book. Using I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as an example of why novels with sensitive material shouldn’t be banned, the reasons are going to be discussed in the following body paragraphs. Along with the opposite viewpoint of why books with sensitive material should be banned. Critical issues can be noticed in multiple novels with sensitive material, everyone chooses whether or not they want to read it or not, no one is forcing them to. Being able to read and understand sensitive material is a good component to growing new perspectives, and can also bring awareness to the material mentioned from the book. There are multiple

The threatening of the rapist, Mr.Freeman killing her brother if she let it out, is also a sensitive subject, but we all can learn from the context and why the author decided to create a book with sensitive content. When Maya has first realized that she had been raped, she didn’t think much of it. She didn’t know that the person she looked up to as a father figure could be capable of such a horrible thing. Maya was scared to tell anyone, especially her brother or anyone for that matter, about the incident because Mr. Freeman said that he would kill Bailey if she told anyone. On page 74, in the second paragraph Mr. Freeman asks, “Ritie, you love Bailey?” 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

If the African Americans were to disrespect the whites then the KKK would be involved and at the time both of the whites and African Americans were scared of the KKK, and feared what they would do. The African Americans had to address white people formally so; Miss, ms, mrs, sir, etc. Even if the whites were being racist and cruel toward the African Americans they couldn’t say anything out of pocket. Throughout the book it is seen that African Americans have to hide their voice, or their voice isn’t heard to begin with. If banning I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because it has sensitive material then you’re banning the voices of African Americans and their overcoming of racism, even though racism is still a problem today. An example of voices not being heard would be on page 30, in the third paragraph momma says “Sister, go on inside.” Momma said this because the white girls that just got done were stopping by the store to harass momma. She told maya to go inside because maya wouldn’t have kept her peace, and would’ve gotten hurt or even