A review of Maya Angelou’s book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.
This paper examines I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, an autobiographical diary of her childhood. It examines two excerpts from the book – her experiences in the picking season and the description of Mrs. Cullinan, her cookery teacher, and analyzes her writing style. It shows how Maya Angelou writes with a style that leaves little to the reader’s imagination and how she writes with emotion, making a serious subject such as growing up in a racially charged environment, easier to read.
“Maya Angelou writes about living in the store with her Grandmother when she is a small girl. In the following except she mentions watching the field across from the store. “Each year I watched the field across from the Store turned caterpillar green, then gradually frosty white. I knew exactly how long it would be before the big wagons would pull into the front yard and load on the cotton pickers at daybreak to carry them to the remains of slavery’s plantations. (Angelou, 1969).