I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

"As a teenager, I started to dislike reading, mainly because it was hard to find books I identified with. This is one of the few books that pulled me in at that time."

"A woman who had found an incredible expression of her human experience, which was filled with pain. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings – the poetry of that is inherent in the title. It tells you so much about what to expect in the book, but also about her experience and her being able to channel that through her work, which is what I define as an artist."

"This was the first autobiography that meant everything to me as a young survivor struggling to find voice and meaning through the overbearing darkness. Angelou did what great writers of memoir do; she let me know that I was not alone because someone else had been there and made it out to tell the truth."

"A deeply personal story of the brutalization of a whole people in the world’s most important democracy. This is the first Angelou book that I read, when I was much younger, and to this day I am unable to compute the breathtaking immorality of her (people’s) circumstances. I still cannot even imagine enduring and surviving that kind of pain and violence and injustice. It is as relevant and important today as ever."