I know why the caged bird sings: Maya Angelous lessons on Oppression - Research Paper Example

Maya writes, “A light shade had been pulled down between the Black community and all things white, but one could see through it enough to develop fear admiration contempt…” The author mainly talks about the plague of racism and division among societies and how being a black young girl, she was affected by this segregation. She considered blond people beautiful and considered herself ugly and fat. This racism affected her life since she was of very young age and kept on affecting her life and after many years of listening to people make racial comments against her, she eventually learns how to live in the society being a black girl.

Another theme that is prevalent in the book is devitalizing relocation . Angelou was continuously shifted between different homes and cities. As she mentions in the book when she recites a poem on Easter, “What are you looking at me for?. I didn’t come to stay”. These lines depict two of the problems that Maya went through as a child. She thought of herself as an extremely ugly person and had a mind that though that everything was temporary and she would have to skip home again. Because of racism and being young, she is continuously shuffled and ripped off of her self esteem at every step of the way.

She realizes that this isn’t happening only to her but it is occurring to everyone who is black. She eventually gets resistant to this evil that prevails in the society in the form of racism and learns how to retaliate. Because of the continuous struggle that she has to go through in her life, in one of the passages in chapter 34 she writes, “The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.

The fact that the adult American