I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
By Maya Angelou
Categories: Biographies & Memoirs
Maya Angelou's 1969 memoir, the first of her seven autobiographies, begins when she and her brother, Bailey, are sent as small children to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou describes the racism of the segregated South, the trauma of being assaulted at eight while staying with her mother in St. Louis, and the silence that followed. Through books, the kindness of others and her own spirit she finds her voice, and the story follows her to San Francisco as a teenager.