I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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.

Review: ‘I know that not since the days of my childhood, when people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself more moved’ James Baldwin

Format: Paperback
Pages: 320
Imprint: Virago UK
Publication date: 26/01/1984