I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

"Yes. There’s a lovely line in it that connects to everything we’ve been talking about: “Few, if any, survive their teens.” This book describes her childhood, growing up in Stamps, Arkansas. She and her brother arrive at the house of their grandmother, having been dispatched by their own father and mother. The threat of racial violence is always present, and her increasing awareness of that as she grows older. At the centre of it is a rape: she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend at eight years old. I was given this book by my mother when I was a teenager. It showed me that these stories of girlhood and self realisation matter—that they have a place, should be told and shared, and they’re important. I’m not sure if that’s why she decided to give it to me; I was never able to ask her and she’s passed now. I still have my mum’s copy. But what do I find interesting about it? So many things. Firstly, it’s so beautifully written. Her voice is right there, all the time, so strong through it all. And she has wonderfully lyrical descriptions of the American south, of San Francisco or family picnics, totally evocative. Even in these moments of lyricism, the voice never slips. Sometimes we can become artificial—how we speak and how we write is so different. But she never slips into artifice. While this rape, is central to what happens to her, in some ways it does not define her sense of personhood. In some ways, she’s not given the space to allow it to define her, because although she is given a moment to heal, she is then expected to just get on with it. Her trauma isn’t given any space in her life as a young person. She stopped talking for several years. I think they called her ‘uppity’ for not talking, when clearly that’s the reaction of a traumatised child. But then the book—and, in some ways, also she—keeps going. She discovers books, she keeps moving through the world. I think that resilience is what struck me. By the end, she finds her agency, becomes an agent in her own life, starts making choices for herself and her body. For better or worse, the book ends when she gets pregnant after her first time having consensual sex. You see her at the very end, trying to understand her body and make sense of it. She’s always felt ungainly. She’s tall, she feels she’s clumsy. And she worries that when she sleeps with the baby in her bed she’s going to crush it or push it out of bed. But her mother encourages her to sleep with the baby, then she wakes her—and naturally the two of them are curled around each other, and there’s a sense of trusting her body and herself and that it will be okay. It ends on that beautiful image. In a book of great hardship, a lot of suffering and violence, I’ve always found that image redemptive: these three women together, the intergenerational learning in that moment, and the potential for that even amidst the trauma and the pain. Obviously this book had a big impact on me. But I think I forgot it was memoir. Because it took me a really long time to write memoir and call it memoir. The first story I submitted during a creative writing module at university, I wrote about a sexual experience that I’d had when I was younger that I was trying to make sense of. I called it fiction, but it was almost entirely true. You could see what I was trying to do with memoir, but it took me so long to give myself permission to do that—to write about what has happened to me, what I’ve been through, and to call it nonfiction, call it memoir, and to feel that it had a place. So I’m very grateful to all of these writers, for doing that and helping me learn these lessons."

"Her journey of self-discovery and empowerment through literature, and her love of words, influenced my understanding of the transformative power of art."

"The only book that stuck with me in a positive way was "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," by Maya Angelou."

"Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings was one of those definitive works that pierced my heart and opened my eyes."

"Age 17, I was profoundly affected by Maya Angelou's "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" — maybe because she survived a childhood rape to become that most exalted of creatures: a writer."

"As a teenager in Mississippi I vividly remember reading "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings." I identified with her quest for independence."