Two part reading response: “I know why the caged bird sings” by Maya Angelou

Two part reading response: “I know why the caged bird sings” by Maya Angelou

The title refers to the lack of freedom. This is the story told by the protagonist Marguerite (Maya). She and Bailey Johnson left at the early age by their parents to live in their parental grandmother; “Momma” as she called her. They were grew up by her. They came at Stamps Arkansas in the middle of the Negro area by train when Marguerite was only three and her brother four.  There, she learns the harshness and reality of prejudice, discrimination and racism. Her Momma had a store in the village, which gave her a good reputation. Momma is strong enough even when they  have thought about her as cowardly and not respond to the mocking of white people but she says just that she is realistic and it was for that she had managed to stand before ‘them’ until the present days. Also with a little boast she repeats the fact that she was the only woman called Mrs. It is clear that racism was present in those days , but she know how to combat it, because she is a strong woman; a woman who possesses a store and managed it by her own. The novel is about the persecution of Negros even in their home. It is said that the white in their village were so ‘’prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy a vanilla ice-cream except for the fourth July.  They had to be satisfied with chocolate.’’(Chapter 6, p 46). Even in the simply things of life they have to be treated by their color. The racism is a strong emotion in the novel and it is treated in the eyes of a thirteen-year-old girl, who suffer from the lack of freedom to do what she wants. This leads to strong emotion and introduces us a hard life that racism causes and the bad things it brings. It is so unfair to treat a person based on the color of his skin. This feeling make her sometimes ‘escapes’ in a fairy world where she had white color skin and fairy hair with blue eyes. She finds the color of the skin as ‘guilty’ of prohibiting a lot of basic things. Bringing up a child with the idea that her skin color led to a hard life made this child to blame himself/herself and seeing this fact as a bad luck. In fact it is the others problem, because they do not know how to behave and what its fair. We should understand that it isn't skin color that makes a person, is the inner side that really matters.  She was a literary girl because she reads lots of books and had another perspective to see the world. The return to her father was another chapter on her life. A father who she thought about him as being dead because there could not have other reason of letting her unknown about him. Bailey was more affected by the arrival of father and excited to know their mother. It was not the same for Maya. She hated to move away from that nest and go to another world where she felt of not belonging to. She became raped from the partner of her mother Mr. Freeman. What kind of ironic is expressed by his name as a freeman? Free to do what he wants.  After hearing about her rapist had been kicked to death she decided to stop talking because it was for the words that came out her mouth that man found the death. She felt guilty and blamed herself for what happened to him.  I think that she took the right decision, because someone who commits a crime must be punished.  It was because of her teacher Mrs. Flowers who encouraged her of getting use of the words. It was long way of recovering her from that experience and to gain self-confident. After being graduated from high school she becomes a mother. Maybe finally she could be the mother she never had. This novel faced us with racism, rape and the consequences they bring. It makes us aware of this terrible thing and encourages us to think about solution and act in order to bring racism and everything bad related to it to an end.