Rating: 
Summary: A summer reading flop.
Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the story of Maya Angelou and her difficult life from her early childhood and onward. To put it plainly, I found this book to be a large amount of incoherent babble. This book simply further emphasizes a point drilled into my head years ago. What they went through was hell, but how many times must the point be proved? I have encountered many passages throughout this autobiography describing white people as "them" or explaining why whites are in fact not even real people! Imagine that!This book fell into my hands late last June and part of a summer homework assignment to read the book, pick ten key passages, and respond to them in a journal like presentation. I found this book extreamly painful to get through and it literally took me until the very last minute to acually sit down and force myself through three desciptions of sexual molestation, and countless descriptions about how white people are "different" or "not of this world". I see the only audience for this book are white supremacists who are looking to change their views on this world.
Rating: 
Summary: This is the best book I ever read. Period.
Review: I teach it to my high schoolers when I have the chance. Terribly moving and beautifully written... and funny! Full of life and pride and wisdom. Read it--and take pleasure in the fact that it's been banned in many places!
Rating:
Summary: Inspiring and uplifting
Review: The beautiful writing in this book made my heart sing. How I loved the way she worded things! I devoured this book and basked in its warm shower of words. What a blessing to have found her writings.
Rating:
Summary: From Caged to Free
Review: Maya Angelou has led and interesting life, and she does an excellent job portraying it in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. As a young child growing up, Maya feels that she does not fit in. The opening lines: "What are you looking at me for? I didn't come to stay..." resonate throughout the whole novel. Marguerite Johnson (Maya Angelou's real name) is on a search for acceptance, but she can't find it. Society is telling her that she has to change who she is to be accepted, her grandmother is more concerned about doing the Lord's work then telling Marguerite that she loves her, and her parents are constantly shipping her off to live with someone else whenever things get too hard. As Marguerite matures into a teenager she learns to deal with the social isolation she feels. She deals with the racism that segregated Stamps deals out to her, and even manages to become a streetcar driver in Los Angeles, something unheard of for Black people at the time. She overcomes her sense of displacement by feeling her own way around life. She has accepted that her mother notices her out of "the corner of her existence" and she learns to make the most of that. She is begins to get more comfortable with her body at the end of the novel, as she cuddles with her newborn child. I suggest this book for anyone. It is an excellent read. I do, however, feel that it is a better book for a college student than a high school one because there are many allusions in it that a high school student would be unfamiliar with. I recently taught this novel to a group of 11th graders, and I had to continually stop to explain things like who Oedipus was and why Maya refers to herself as being like Switzerland in World War II while her brother and Mother Dear were fighting. While I do not disagree with teaching the novel in high school, I think it should be looked at again by a more mature audience. You will get a deeper appreciation for what a great writer Maya Angelou really is.
Rating: 
Summary: I know why the caged bird sings
Review: I know why the caged bird sings is a book about a small hometown back many years ago when there was still racism. This book was very calm, just about the blacks life when they were hated for nothing. This book was written by Maya Angelou. A girl named Maya is telling her life story, she starts off by telling about herself then about a woman named Barbara Flowers, and she is the owner of a small shop. As the story goes through it just has many people going in and out of the store and telling what the black people had to do and how the white people treated them because of their skin colors.
Kelsey Allen
Rating: 
Summary: Inspirational? Yes. Exciting? No.
Review: I think this book was inspirational but honestly ... it was so boring a pretty much feel asleep within the first thirty pages. For adventure seekers, this is a "no-no."
Rating: 
Summary: Well done
Review: I have never read a story like this before. It is about an African American girl growing up analyzing her life and comparing it to other human beings. It is about thinking of only the good and overcoming small obstacles in everyday life. It is about caring and knowing what family is. What a marvelous read.
Rating:
Summary: "Inspiring Writer"
Review: Starr Brown I know Why the Caged Bird Sings is one of the most interesting and inspiring books you will ever read. This book is re-enacted in the reader's mind of the childhood of a women named Maya Angelou. This book discussed her struggles as a child and growing up. Maya went through many rough times ever since she was a little girl. This novel is an autobiography; this book deals a lot with family morals along with self-morals as well. It deals with some adult situations, for example Maya was raped when she was just a very young girl. Since she was raped she went through many emotional problems to the point when she went mute and did not speak to hardly anyone for many years. In I know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the reader will learn that Maya found her fate at an immature state of mind and by her knowing that her life would be different and more difficult then anybody else her age. She went through some other really rough times that made her childhood even tougher and painful but at the same time taught Maya to face life's challenges head on.
This novel also talks about the two different lifestyles that both she and her big brother bailey had to encounter. The lives that they had to face in Arkansas with her grandmother and uncle Willie and the life that she had with her mother in St. Louis.
Even though she was not truly happy either place/life being with her grand mother seemed to spark more joy then a little bit in Maya's heart
I would recommend this book and her type of books to any one who knows what it feels like to have a hard life and can relate to her, also to any one who just enjoys reading. This book is not slow pace and it is really easy to get into the book. From this book I got to see that I was not the only one out there that been though some struggles and it made me a stronger person to read and understand the situations and purpose of this book. I enjoyed this novel and plan on reading more or her work in the future.
Rating:
Summary: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Review: This is an enjoyable, easy-to-read short book written by Maya Angelou about her childhood in the segregated deep south. She skillfully decribes both good-times and bad in Stamps, Arkansas where she and her brother, raised by her grandmother and uncle, took on many childhood adventures in and around her grandmother's general store in the Negro section of town. She devotes several chapters to a time when she and her brother lived in Long Beach, California with her fast moving mother and indifferent father. When things go bad, she describes her return to a simple yet orderly life in Stamps. The reader is touched by the difficulties overcome by Maya Angelou and has a new appreciation for those who were raised in a different place and time. Her upbringing filled with discipline, hard-work and solid roles models had a positive impact on her as a person. She was able to overcome the negative influences. Most of all, the key to her success is contagious and when finished, the reader is left with a glimmer of hope that if she can do it, so can I.... no matter what my walk of life. Very inspirational book!
Rating:
Summary: An interesting but not especially intriguing journey
Review: Maya Angelou chronicles the first sixteen years of her life in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first of three installments of her life story. Beginning in dusty Stamps, Arkansas and eventually ending in glamourous San Francisco (while visiting exciting St. Louis and imposing Mexico in between) Angelou pivots her childhood chronicle around youth's joy and tribulations. Alternating between comedy and tragedy, Angelou's work reads like a treasured bedtime story on a chilly evening, blanket and cocoa included. Words are expertly manipulated in order to produce fascinating accounts of otherwise plebeian events. However, the book's Achilles heel likes in these very events; only so many beautifully unique ways exist to explain daily life, and much to the language's avail, the book suffers for it. Still, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Angelou produced a vivid portrait of life in the slow deep South in the 1930s.
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