I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

   1969; 310 pages.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Biographies & Memoirs; Banned Books; Civil Rights Movement; Non-Fiction.  Overall Rating: 9½*/10.

 

    When we think about the start of the Civil Rights movement in America, the 1950s will most likely come to mind.  Things like Martin Luther King Jr., Selma, bus boycotts, Rosa Parks, protest marches, and much more.

 

    But what was life like for Blacks in the years just before all that?  In the 1930s everyone struggled with the Great Depression, and in the 1940s, World War 2 saw over a million American soldiers either killed or wounded, including both blacks and whites. What was it like for black children growing up in those years?

 

    Also, were conditions different for blacks depending on what geographic area of the United States they were living in?  For instance, were things better in Missouri than in Mississippi?  Maybe being Black in California was better than both of those places.  If so, how much better?

 

    Maya Angelou, American memoirist, poet, and civil rights activist, was born in 1928, so grew up in the 1930s/40s. and lived in all those areas along the way.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings recounts her turbulent experiences during those decades.

 

What’s To Like...

    I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the first book in the 7-volume autobiographical series.  It details her childhood experiences starting when she was three years old and, along with her four-year-old brother Bailey, moved in with her grandmother due to the divorce of her parents.  The book ends with a momentous life-changing event in her life when she was sixteen, and presumably the sequel, Gather Together in my Name, continues from there.

 

    The 310 pages are divided up into 36 chapters, which averages out to 8+ pages/chapter.  There is heavy emphasis on Maya’s interactions with her family members, particularly her brother Bailey.  We also watch the child Maya struggle to come to grips with racism (be careful when going to “whitefolksville”), sexual assault (Maya was raped when she was eight years old), and self-reliance (she grew up in a world where circumstances were heavily stacked against her).

 

    Maya’s birth name was Marguerite Annie Johnson, and it was fascinating to learn how her first name morphed into Maya (Marguerite --> Margaret --> Mary --> Maya).  I presume the changing of her last name is due to marriage, but that doesn’t happen in this book. Religion plays a prominent part in Maya’s entire family, and along the way the reader accompanies her to a tent revival (I’ve been to a couple) and learn why the phrase “by the way” is considered blasphemous in some fundamentalist circles.  

 

    Maya’s teenage years were just as unsettled as her childhood, but the reader gets to watch Maya evolve from someone “ignorant of her ignorance” into someone “being aware of being aware”.  In a show of perseverance, Maya applies for, and is eventually hired as San Francisco’s first Negro streetcar conductor.  A short time later, she learns to drive a stick-shift car, with no advance training, at night, on a lonely stretch of road in Mexico, with her dad passed out in the back seat.  Which then leads to her getting stabbed by her dad’s girlfriend.

  

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 36,661 ratings and 4,245 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.30*/5, based on 555,423 ratings and 17,684 reviews.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Powhitetrash (n.) : someone so poor (and white) that they cannot afford the missing “o” and “r”.

Others: Siditty (adj.); Chifforobe (n.); Ordurous (adj).

 

Excerpts...

    San Franciscans would have sworn on the Golden Gate Bridge that racism was missing from the heart of their air-conditioned city.  But they would have been sadly mistaken.

    A story went the rounds about a San Franciscan white matron who refused to sit beside a Negro civilian on the streetcar, even after he made room for her on the seat.  Her explanation was that she would not sit beside a draft dodger who was a Negro as well.  She added that the least he could do was fight for his country the way her son was fighting on Iwo Jima.  The story said that the man pulled his body away from the window to show an armless sleeve.  He said quietly and with great dignity, “Then ask your son to look around for my arm, which I left over there.”  (loc. 2590)

 

    The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate, and Black lack of power.

    The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence.  It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance.  (loc. 3284)

 

Kindle Details…

    The e-book version of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings sells for $7.99 at Amazon right now.  The other six books chronicling Maya Angelou’s life range in price from $5.99 to $13.99.  Maya Angelou was a prolific writer of poetry, plays, screenplays, memoirs, essays, children’s books, and cookbooks.  Most of her works are in the $3.99-$14.99 price range for the Kindle format.

 

Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware.  (loc. 3268)

    For such a tough start to her life, there is a surprisingly small amount of profanity in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.  I noted just eight instances in the first 50% of the book, and most of those were the N-word racial epithet.  The sexual molestation is handled as tactfully as possible, and later on there is one roll-in-the-hay.  I caught only one typo in the whole e-book: staring/starring.

 

    The Wikipedia article mentions that some reviewers categorize I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as “autobiographical fiction” but it also cites other reviewers (in the “Style and Genre” section) as fully meeting the requirements to be called an “Autobiography”.

 

    I have always suspected that any autobiography will be inherently slanted to some degree in the author’s favor.  For that matter, I think this happens even in most biographies.  If you’re an biography writer, and you want to get paid for your work by your subject, you’re naturally going to present the life you’re writing about in a favorable light as much as possible.

 

    For me, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was a thoroughly captivating and heartfelt work.  I grew up in the Civil Rights era, but that was during the 1960s, not the 1940s/50s.  It was enlightening to read about the roots of the Civil Rights movement.  My only quibble is that I have to read six more books to learn the complete story of Maya Angelou’s life.

 

    9½ Stars.  One last thing.  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has been one of the most banned books in the US school system for many years.  Wikipedia’s article on the book devotes a whole section, titled “Censorship”, to the details and statistics of the bans.  It is worth your time.

A Mighty Long Way - Carlotta Walls LaNier

   2009; 273 pages.  Full Title: A Mighty Long Way – My Journey to Justice at Little Rock Central High School.  New Author?  : Yes.  Genres : Civil Rights; American History;  Non-Fiction; Black and African-American Biographies.  Overall Rating: 9*/10.

 

    I am old enough to remember watching on TV the struggles to integrate schools in the Deep South.  The one that remains etched in my mind is George Wallace, then governor of Alabama, standing on the steps of a building, presumably on the University of Alabama campus, impeding black students, who were being escorted by federal troops, from entering therein.  Bloodshed loomed in my 12-year-old brain.

 

    But before push came to shove, and after giving a short segregationist speech, Wallace moved aside.  Shooting and other assorted violence were averted, at least while the national cameras were capturing the moment.  The students walked through the doors.

 

    But I’ve always wondered:  What was it like for those black students, and those who integrated other schools throughout the South, on the second day of school, or a week later, or when the next semester rolled around?  What harassment did they did they suffer through when all the cameras, troops, and news crews were no longer present?

 

    Thanks to A Mighty Long Way, I have an answer.

 

What’s To Like...

    Carlotta Walls LaNier is one of the “Little Rock Nine”, a group of high school age black students that took the first steps in integrating the Arkansas educational system in 1957.  I was just seven years old at the time and frankly I don’t remember it at all.  A Mighty Long Way is Carlotta’s memoir about the experience and how it impacted her life for many decades to come.

 

There are 17 chapters plus a prologue in the book.  They can be roughly divided into:

    1.) Prologue + Chs. 1-3:  Family history and early life.

    2.) Chs. 4-9: High school years and Integration.

    3.) Chs. 10-11: The house-bombing.

    4.) Chs. 12-14: High school graduation and college years.

    5.) Chs. 14-17: Post-collegiate Life.

 

    It should come as no surprise that Carlotta’s traumatic 10^th grade year (some of the other Little Rock Nine were 11^th and 12^th graders) had a profound effect on the rest of her life.  It did surprise me, however, that for many years afterward, she avoided mentioning her role in the integration movement and turned down all requests to speak at schools, churches, and other public events about it.

 

    The “Jackie Robinson test” was enlightening, and I was in awe of Carlotta’s meeting the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.  I enjoyed her (and my) grade-school memories of eagerly awaiting the Weekly Reader to be passed out, and I had to look up what the rules were to the card game “pitty-pat”.  I cringed when she had to endure being spat upon, cursed at and shoved in the high school halls while going to classes, and shuddered when she gave the details of the lynching of Emmett Till.  The dynamite-bombing of her family’s home and the relentless and untraceable telephone hate calls made me realize that integrating someplace in the South meant risking your life, as well as your family’s.

 

    The book closes on a high note: Barack Obama’s election to the presidency in 2008.  Carlotta sees it as a culmination of the Civil Rights movement, and one she never expected to see in her lifetime.  Even if she did favor Hillary Clinton early in the campaign.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.7*/5, based on 540 ratings and 70 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.14*/5, based on 1,365 ratings and 204 reviews

 

Kewlest New Word ...

She-Ro (n.) : a woman regarded as a hero.

 

Excerpts...

    It never occurred to me as I grew up to question, even in my mind, why colored folks could go to the park only on certain days, why we had to climb to the back of the bus, or why stopping at a gas station to use the bathroom in most areas of the South wasn’t even an option.  Those were just the rules, and I learned to follow them like I learned to walk, by observing those closest to me and following their guidance until I knew the steps well enough to venture out on my own.  (loc. 340)

 

    Wherever I go to talk to students, I usually encounter some who know little or nothing about the Little Rock Nine.  Sometimes they’re African American.  Sometimes they’re white, Latino, or Asian.  But when they hear my story, often they get angry, like the white kid whose hand went up slowly in the back of the room after my first speech at Ponderosa High School in a Denver suburb many years ago.

    “Why am I just learning this?” he asked.  “Why haven’t I learned this in school before now?”  (loc. 3984)

 

That is the point of this book: to show that determination, fortitude, and the ability to move the world aren’t reserved for the “special” people.  (loc. 128)

    There’s not much to quibble about in A Mighty Long Way.  I counted just 7 cusswords in the entire book, and those were mostly when she was quoting somebody.  There is of course a slew of instances where she has to endure the N-word being screamed at her, but that was to be expected.

 

    There’s also a lot of name-dropping of people she met.  To name a few: Thelonius Monk (and many other jazz musicians), Thurgood Marshall, Satchel Paige, Langston Hughes, Herb Adderley, and Bill & Hillary Clinton.  But those encounters rang true, particularly the stone-throwing incident in Central Park, and it was kinda neat to see all the celebrities she rubbed shoulders with over the course of her life.

 

    I spotted only two typos – mid wester/midwestern and fifty-two-hundred/fifty-two hundred.  Kudos to the editors and proofreaders.  The book cover lists it as being written “with Lisa Frazier Page”, and the Foreword is by President Bill Clinton.  In Chapter 8 there are some family pictures of Carlotta and her kin.  Those were extremely heartwarming.

 

    9 Stars.  We live in an age where book-banning has once again become commonplace, and teachers, whether they are mentoring elementary school students or collegians, risk being fired for revealing what really occurred during critical moments in America's History.  Desegregation was an ugly time for the United States, but sweeping it under the carpet just makes it worse.  Thank goodness there are books like A Mighty Long Way, which tell the facts about the American Civil Rights movement, even if it is a harsh awakening.