I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

A Catcher's Mitt on Both Hands

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back,"-Maya Angelou. Maya Angelou did exactly that. Marguerite Johnson, now none as Maya Angelou, wrote an autobiography on her early life known as I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. In the beginning of the book Maya and her brother are sent to Stamps, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother. Their parents were getting a divorce and didn't want them around for it. This book showed the journey that was Maya's life; from California to Stamps to St. Louis then back to Stamps to Los Angeles to Oakland to San Francisco from the ages three to seventeen. Maya is faced with a triple crossfire of racism, sexism, and power. She is degraded ad belittled at every turn, making her unable to open up her heart to people and never feel comfortable in staying in one place. The only thing that accompanied her and never changed was her love for reading. A motif is a distinctive feature or dominant idea in an artistic or literary composition. One of the reoccurring themes in this novel was literature. Throughout her life, literature plays a significant role in boosting her confidence and providing a world for her to escape in. She learned from books, found confidence in books, and made life connections through books.

Maya had a very informal education. She learned from the books she read more than she did from her own teachers. Maya states early in the novel that she, "met and fell in love with William Shakespeare" (Angelou 13). Shakespeare was Maya's first white love. She felt most familiar when reading Shakespeare, but she knew that Momma wouldn't be happy with that. Maya knew that if she and Bailey ever memorized anything from Shakespeare that Momma would question them about it, and she would find out that she was white. Maya thought that it was okay to like Shakespeare because he was dead, but Momma didn't agree with that at all. Shakespeare wasn't the only white person Maya liked, though. When she was in San Francisco she met a teacher named Miss Kirwin. Miss Kirwin was one of the only teachers that Maya could remember at that age. She encouraged her students to read. She was a current events teacher and managed to get the students to read, "... the San Francisco papers, Time magazine, Life and everything available to me" (216). Miss Kirwin was one of the only teachers that really cared and gave Maya a proper education and managed to incorporate literature into it. Through this informal learning Maya managed to become a better person overall, and learned some of the life lessons that she needed to know.

Maya finds hope in the books she reads. Maya was always so involved with her fantasy world that she used it as a way to cope with her rape. When she was being raped she said, "I was sure any moment that my mother or Bailey or the Green Hornet would bust in the door and save me" (78). The Green Hornet is a fictional character and at a time of great need Maya managed to connect herself to literature. Not only did she manage to connect literature to during the rape, but afterwards as well. After she was raped she refused to talk because of the destructive power of words, but Mrs. Flowers helped Maya rediscover her voice. She encouraged her to use the words of other writers and poets. While Mrs. Flowers read A Tale of Two Cities to Maya her voice, "...slid in and curved down through and over the words" (100). Maya wasn't the only character in the books we have read this year that had to go through some sort of sexual harassment. A man attempted to rape Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. In this book Francie's mother, Katie, shot the man before anything could happen to Francie. Maya didn't have that same fate. She did get raped, but Mr. Freeman was murdered. He was found beaten to death in the back of an alley behind a butcher shop. Before she left for Stamps after the rape, Maya went to the library. When spring came to St. Louis she, "... took out my first library card, and since Bailey and I were growing apart, I spent most of my Saturdays at the library" (76). There is some sort of underlying message in that statement. She and Bailey were growing apart and spending time in the library was her way of coping with that. So many different events were thrown at her at once that reading was