I know why the caged bird sings
969 Blackbirds 1998 233 pages 2pts.
This book is a of autobiographic novel manners and adolescence. It's about a black girl who is growing up in the thirties. She lives a part of her live with her grandma in the country and a part of her live with her mother in the city. The story takes place in the united states of America. The book is called 'I know why the caged bird sings' because the girl, who is called Marguerite, is growing up in America, where people discriminate a lot against black people. She's also a woman and women have always been oppressed . Marguerite is a 'free prisoner'. When birds are caged they sing. Marguerite knows why birds do that, because she is 'caged' too. By singing she encourages herself.
The book is about the oppressing of women and the way white people discriminate black people.
It's about growing up without parents en reuniting with parents. The pain all these things causes is the main theme of the book.
The author of the book is mainly concerned with the characters of the people. It's about the psychological development of Marguerite. That's the most important thing in this book. Naturally, the action is important too, because they influence the thoughts and feelings of her. The main characters are Marguerite, her older brother Bailey, her grandmother and her parents. They are all black people who live in the lower class. Marguerites parents live in the city, where the classes aren't so obvious as in the country. The relation between the main characters is obvious; they are family. I like Marguerite very much, because she's suffering a lot and she still wants to do the things right. She's very vulnerable. Marguerites grandmother is someone who hasn't learnt to show her feelings, but she loves her grandchildren very much. I only think she's a little bit to religious, which makes her forget her love for her grandchildren and what's the best for them. The father of Bailey and Marguerite isn't quite a nice man, because he left his children with his mother and when he picked them up, he wasn't a good father anymore, because his children didn't even recognise him.
The story is about the adolescence of Marguerite. She lives with her grandmother, uncle and brother in a store. They live there live, longing for their mother. She goes to church every week and tells strange stories in the book about this services. They impress her a lot. One day their father is showing up and takes them with him. They go to the city to live with their mother and their other grandmother. Their mother has a boyfriend, who rapes Marguerite two times. She doesn't know he rapes her, but she hates it. First she thought he showed her his love, but the nest time she know it's something bad, that he does to her. She gets ill and no-one knows why. When they find out, Mr. Freeman (their mothers girlfriend) goes to jail. Marguerite and Bailey go back to their Grandmother, but Marguerite hasn't forgot everything, she thinks it's all her fault. Fortunately she never thinks about it, till she sees her mother again. Back in the country, discriminating gets clearer for the two children. Marguerite gets a toothache and she has to go to a white dentist, because there aren't any blacks nearby. When they arrive, he tells Marguerites grandmother, he doesn't want to help her, because they're black. A lot of that sort of things happen. Bailey came all shocked in the shop one day, because he saw a black man hit by some white. It isn't good anymore to live in the country. So Bailey and Marguerite go to their mother again. Bailey changes a lot in the city, they used to hang around together, but now Bailey is getting a grown up and wants to live on his own. Marguerites dad invites her to come over to his place to stay there for a while with him and his girlfriend. But his girlfriend doesn't like Marguerite and they get into a fight, which results in a attack with a knife by the girlfriend. Marguerite runs away and gets in touch with a group of children who live on the street. She hangs around for a month with them. Then she goes home again to her mother. At the end of the book Marguerite gets pregnant. She sleeps with a boy she doesn't know to proof she isn't a lesbian. She thinks lesbians are a kind of monsters.
She doesn't know its a sexual preference. At the end of the book she holds her son in her arms.
The climax of the book is, according to me, the time after her wandering with her streetfriends. She got really an adult, it's a plain difference between before she went to her dad and when she went back home. In this book there's a first-person narrator, it's told by Marguerite the main character. The story is chronologically built up. There are more descriptions of Marguerites thoughts and actions than dialogues, that's because Marguerite doesn't talk a lot.
I wouldn't recommend this book to my friends, because I think the book is a little bit boring. It could have been one-hundred pages thinner. I think there are a lot of books about this subject, which are a lot more interesting. The good thing about this book, is that it's a true story. I bought the book, because it was one of the Blackbirds. I think this book don't have to be in the library, because there are much more better books about discriminating of black women and all their troubles.
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