I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings |  | Author: Maya Angelou
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Category: Book
List Price: $6.99
Buy New: $3.12
as of 3/10/2010 20:25 PST details
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Seller: any_book
Rating:  318 reviews
Media: Mass Market Paperback
Pages: 304
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 6.8 x 4.1 x 0.6
ISBN: 0345514408
Dewey Decimal Number: 818.54092
EAN: 9780345514400
Publication Date: April 21, 2009
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | ISBN13: 9780345514400 | | • | Condition: NEW | | • | Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark. |
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| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com Review
In this first of five volumes of autobiography, poet Maya Angelou recounts a youth filled with disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and finally hard-won independence. Sent at a young age to live with her grandmother in Arkansas, Angelou learned a great deal from this exceptional woman and the tightly knit black community there. These very lessons carried her throughout the hardships she endured later in life, including a tragic occurrence while visiting her mother in St. Louis and her formative years spent in California--where an unwanted pregnancy changed her life forever. Marvelously told, with Angelou's "gift for language and observation," this "remarkable autobiography by an equally remarkable black woman from Arkansas captures, indelibly, a world of which most Americans are shamefully ignorant."
Product Description
Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age–and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns about love for herself and the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned.
Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a modern American classic that will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read.
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 318
 What Are The Other 5 Titles? March 2, 2010
Sept
Hi
I just read "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" and loved it. I understand that this is the first part of six books but I can't find a list of those books. Can someone tell me in order what the other 5 autobiographical titles are?
Thanks!
The Great Migration February 23, 2010
B. Wolinsky (New York)
Maya Angelo's story is about how people live in the different parts of North America. As a child in the Deep South, she lives in an all-Black enclave, where her grandmother, a storekeeper, is the neighborhood matriarch. There may be no money, but they do have a loving community.
Then the story turns dark. Her mother takes her and her brother to St. Louis, and there's no love in the city. Life is fast and cheap, and you'd better move fast or be stepped on. She's molested by her mother's live-in boyfriend, who later turns up dead.
Back to the South, onward to San Diego, California. North to San Francisco, down to Los Angeles. "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" is alll about travel and survival. Each part of the USA is different. In each part of the USA, you have to live as the others do, or you'll be taken advantage of.
I know why the caged bird sings February 22, 2010
Noa Gallego De Castro (Barcelona)
The delivery has been really good! The book arrived earlier that the date that was shown on here.
I bought the book for a university work and I really want to finish it! haha =)
Maya Angelou describes things in such a sweet way! She describes a dress like if it was cotton candy and makes you feel hungry! hahaha
Maya Angelou February 6, 2010
S. Potter (So Calif)
I bought this as a gift for my sister - she had requested it - she hasn't commented on how she likes it
 Trite Garbage January 26, 2010
W.Williamson (Portland, OR USA)
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
I had hoped that I would get through life without having to read anything from the queen of self-importance, Maya Angelou. Unfortunately fate intervened and I was required to read this in a college history class. I can summarize it as follows: self-indulgent tripe.
I was amazed at how white people could do nothing right. When the police rode to the house to warn the family to protect the uncle, all she has is criticism. Yes, I guess it would have been better for him to sit by and do nothing.
She complains about how poor and mistreated she was, but everything in the book indicates that her family was a lot better off than most white and black people at the time. Her grandmother had enough means to make loans and help others financially. Yeah, poor Maya. She had to go without for a few months. Oh the humanity!
The only redemption I found in the book is when I threw it in the recycling bin. At least it will end up as something useful. Toilet paper might be most fitting.
If you want to read a profound, thoughtful, life-changing memoir and analysis of racism, check out Catfish and Mandala. Leave this one alone.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 318
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