US English-I Know Why Caged Birds Sing: Home

Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age—and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.

Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. 
Source: Goodreads.com

Story inspired by Maya Angelou's memories of growing up in Depression-era Arkansas. Esther Rolle, Diahann Carroll, Ruby Dee, Constance Good. Bailey Jr.: John M. Driver II. Bailey Sr.: Roger E. Mosley. Miss Flowers: Madge Sinclair. Uncle Willie: Sonny Jim Gaines. Freeman: Paul Benjamin. Directed by Fielder Cook.

Source: https://www.tvguide.com/movies/i-know-why-the-caged-bird-sings/cast/2000109736/

The book’s title came from the poem “Sympathy” by Paul Laurence Dunbar. Against the backdrop of racial tensions in the South, Angelou confronted the traumatic events of her childhood and explored the evolution of her strong identity as an African American woman. Her individual and cultural feelings of displacement were mediated through her passion for literature, which proved both healing and empowering.

After the 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Angelou was inspired by a meeting with writer James Baldwin and cartoonist Jules Feiffer to write I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings as a way of dealing with the death of her friend and to draw attention to her own personal struggles with racism. The book was immediately popular and remained on best-seller lists for two years. Angelou cowrote the screenplay for the 1979 television movie version of the story, which starred Esther Rolle as Momma and Diahann Carroll as Vivian.