i know why the caged bird sings

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings: Cages

Maya Angelou wrote an amazing and entertaining autobiography titled I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, about her hard life growing up as a black girl from the South. Among the hardships are things known as "cages" as stated as a metaphor from Paul Dunbar's poem "Sympathy." "Cages" are things that keep people from succeeding in life and being everything they want to be. Some of Maya Angelou's cages include being black in the 1940's and her overbearing grandmother. In my life, a "cage" is my young age, this causes problems with adults.

A major "cage" from Maya Angelou's youth was that she was black in a prejudice southern town. Maya has recounted in her book the times when she was discriminated against. When she was working for a white woman named Mrs. Viola Cullinan, Mrs. Cullinan started calling her Mary, "That's [Margaret] too

long. She's Mary from now on."(pp.91) One of the most important aspects of a pers...