I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Maya Angelou stresses the importance of family in her writing, yet she didn’t experience a tight-knit family herself. Although Angelou doesn’t outwardly stress the importance of family, she gives the effects of a separated family and the burdens put upon her. Ritie and Baily had a sense of neglect and abandonment because their parents left them at Momma’s. They grew up without the powers of a nuclear family, which the story revolves around because they are forever moving from house to house, with no real place to call home.
Living in the Deep South gave Ritie a sense of belonging because she could relate to the other blacks like one big family, but that kind of family didn’t give her and Baily a real family with a traditional mother and father. In Stamps, Ritie...