I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

“Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily,
and triumph, I would forever have power over it.”

I first read Maya Angelou’s autobiographical books in my early teens.  As a young girl, from a small town in rural south west England, I had been sheltered and oblivious to all that her books revealed.  The books were unavailable in my home town so I bought each one in a ‘modern’ bookshop in Bath.  I devoured them.  Maya’s writings left me shocked, confused and saddened, but also uplifted and proud.  I didn’t always understand what I was reading but her story stayed with me and as I grew older I understood more.

“There was an army of adults, whose motives and movements I just couldn’t understand
 and who made no effort to understand mine.”

Maya’s first book, ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’, was written in 1969.  It begins when, aged 3, Maya is sent with her older brother to live with their grandmother in Arkansas, and ends when she becomes a mother at the age of 17.  

“See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing.
If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”

It is a coming of age story, a story of racism and suffering, but also a story of courage and dignity.  The graphic description of the trauma inflicted on this young black girl meant that it was banned in some schools and libraries. 

"If growing up is painful for the southern black girl,
being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.
It is an unnessecary insult."

The title ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’ comes from the poem ‘Sympathy’ by Paul Lawrence Dunbar, an Afro-American poet.

“One more woman ambushed and raped.  A black boy whipped and maimed … a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.”

Angelou also wrote a ‘Caged Bird’ poem …

The free bird leaps

On the back of the wind

And floats downstream

Till the current ends

And dips his wings

In the orange sun rays

And dares to claim the sky.

But a bird that stalks

down his narrow cage

can seldom see through

his bars of rage

his wings are clipped and

his feet are tied

so he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

With fearful trill

Of the things unknown

But longed for still

And his tune is heard

On the distant hill

for the caged sings of freedom.

The free bird thinks of another breeze

And the trade winds soft through the sighing trees

And the fat worms waiting on a dawn-bright lawn

And he names the sky his own.

But a caged bird stands on the grave of dreams

His shadow shouts on a nightmare scream

His wings are clipped and his feet are tied

So he opens his throat to sing.

The caged bird sings

With a fearful trill

Of things unknown

But longed for still

And his tune is heard

On the distant hill

For the caged bird

Sings of freedom.

They don’t really hate us.  They don’t know us.  How can they hate us?  They mostly scared.” 

Maya Angelou (Source)

 “Can’t do is like don’t care.  Neither of them have a home.” 

All quotes are from the books of Maya Angelou.

May all humankind fly free, uninhibited by cages.

Birdcage will be coming to Sherborne Antiques Fair - Saturday 22nd September

For Michael.