The novel, "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings", by Maya Angelou is the first series of five

autobiographical novels. This novel tells about her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her religious

grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of

three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, are turned over to the care of their paternal

grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Southern life in Stamps, Arkansas was filled with humiliation,

violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux

Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.

Maya knows that to be black and female is to be faced with violence and violation. This is brought

into focus when she goes to live with her mother and is raped by her mother’s boyfriend. When

Maya is faced with this catastrophe, tells who did this to her, and the man is killed, she believes her

she is truly black, she uses this fantasy as a defense mechanism in order to survive the oppression of

her brother back to Stamps. After Maya returns to Stamps and with the help of her Teacher-Ms.

view of beauty. She pretends that she is really white and a cruel fairy stepmother, who was jealous

overcomes his barrier.

For this reason, the novel "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

how Angelou overcomes social obstacles and her struggle to be accepted. Carol Neubauer gives one

in the valedictory address given by her classmate. Maya becomes a single parent at the age of

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