Displacement in I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

"I didn't come to stay." In Maya Angelou's autobiographical work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings this phrase becomes her shield to defend against the various displacing factors that assail her. In Stamps, St. Louis, and even in her various other "cages", Ms. Angelou is displaced by factors that can be divided into three main categories: Racism, Sexism, and other factors that are directly related to her sexual assault.
First, in Chapter Eight, Ms. Angelou says of Stamps that "A light shade had been pulled down between the Black community and all things white." This is a superb analogy of the South in the 1930’s when segregation was in its heyday. From the Speaker at her Eighth Grade Graduation (p. 151), to the Dentist who refuses to work on Maya because he would rather “stick my hand in a dog’s mouth, than a nigger’s.”, and her first employer who takes it upon herself to change Maya’s name, Ms. Angelou experiences many instances of this illogical white hatred during her ch...