I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - 2695 Words

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings According to Willard Scott, â€Å"Positive Feelings come from being honest about yourself and accepting your personality, and physical characteristics, warts and all; and, from belonging to a family that accepts you without question.† Maya Angelou illustrates this in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, an autobiography on herself. It illustrates Maya Angelou’s struggles of accepting herself because of some cruel experiences in her life. Maya was an African American girl who was struggling on living because of her parents divorce. She was pretty strong and she decided to move to Stamps, Arkansas from Long Beach, California with Bailey; her brother, to stay at her grandmother’s, because Maya’s parents are going†¦show more content†¦Maya meets Mrs. Flowers who wanted Maya to talk with someone and let out her guilt about lying in court. After staying with Mrs. Flower Maya started wanting to be like her, Maya wanted to be white. Maya moves back to Los Angeles with her dad, where she and her dad invade a party in Mexico where her dad gets drunk and for the first time in her life she drove a car, as soon as they reach home Maya make decision to move to junk the yard to live independently â€Å"being born black is itself a liability in a world ruled by white stands of beauty which imprison the child prior in a cage of ugliness† (Smith â€Å"Opening† 121). Throughout the novel it runs a theme of ugliness, where Maya is not comfortable with herself and calls herself ugly several times in the novel. Maya finds out a lot about herself after she experiences all the ups and downs, where she learns to live happy and independently. Though Maya and her struggles with acceptance Angelou suggests that a person needs to love themselves in order to have a successful life. To begin with, Maya had a rough start when she was sent to Stamps because her parents were getting divorced. Three year old child who does not know how the world works. Going through a situation where she doesn’t have anyone besides her. As Maya and Bailey come to Stamps, they go to live with their grandmother, Ms. Annie Henderson, well known as Momma in the novel. Maya and Bailey work at a general