I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

The subject - a black woman brought up in the Deep South surrounded by bigotry and poverty - touches themes all too familiar to many but it is the writer's treatment of the material, thoughtful, measured, often amusing and never self-indulgent, communicated through the medium of a remarkably rich style of writing, which leaves the reader with a much deeper understanding of all the players involved at the time. In addition to the author there are some very memorable women, in particular Angelou's grandmother and her mother, the remarkable Vivian Baxter. The men, apart from her brother, Bailey, are lesser, more peripheral beings on the whole.

The writer writes of attitudes within the black community of which she is very gently critical, again in a thoughtful, completely unjudgemental way, and in that same, very muted, tone warns against victim complexes being sometimes unhelpful. Equality is about all being equal, having the same rights and opportunities, whether white or black, not vengeance for appalling ignorance, racist attitudes and shocking behaviour. This is a book written with great humanity and great dignity.

Story of the author's childhood is beautifully told with honesty, dignity and hope.