I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

·   Reader Response: As a reader of the text I was drawn to the autobiography of Maya Angelou. I was able to visualize all of her childhood and resonated with her emotional experiences in the text. This book was written in the time period about three years after Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. were assassinated and puts the reader at the point where black women were searching for identity and independence. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a coming of age novel detailing how Marguerite (Maya) navigated through a racially segregated South, dealt with loneliness due to abandonment, self acceptance, sexual abuse and ultimately is set free through her love of literature and words. 

· Evaluator Response:  I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a novel that I would recommend to anyone. The book confronts racism, change, appearance, and immerses the reader into Stamps, Arkansas and travels with Maquerite (Maya) and her littler brother, Bailey through the South, St. Louis, and eventually San Francisco. A huge strength of this book is how Maya Angelou makes an autobiography read like Literary Fiction. Although the experiences in the book are true, a lot of the accounts in the book are easy to read and visualize for young readers. While she tells of the experiences of herself, thebook echoes the experiences of African Americans as a whole during this time. 

          Teacher Response: I would recommend other Maya Angelou books to interested readers like Letter to My Daughter and Rainbow in the Cloud. I would also recommend Alice Walker's The Color Purple and Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. These main characters share similar experiences with Maya Angelou and ultimately come of age or triumph.

     Literacy Coach Response: I would suggest teaching this book in a series of excerpts in a unit on self identity. While reading this text, I would pair the text with context and background about segregation in the South and Feminism. Students should respond to the events in the book in a Reader Response Journal and determine what cages if any trap their generation.