I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Analysis

Analysis How can one fight against racism? Martin Luther King, Jr. created an invigorating speech about his dream to end racism, Rosa Parks refused to give her seat up on a bus to a white passenger, and Nelson Mandela created equal voting rights. Fighting against racism and other significant social injustices are highly important and are successfully conveyed more in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou than in A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is more successful in impacting the message against racism to the readers because it is an autobiography portraying a black girl, Maya, who learns to accept who she is, while living in a prejudice southern town. From the start, Maya compares herself to a blond haired, blue eyed girl, making herself feel self-conscious. Maya says, “Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn’t let me straighten?” (Angelou 4). From learning to embrace her race over time, she becomes a strong, independent
One example is when Maya felt discriminated at her graduation ceremony when Mr. Edward Donleavy says, “The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Lousises”(Angelou 174). He believed in the limits the opportunities of race had to offer and stereotyped about white children becoming the thinkers and black children only transforming into the athletes. Henry Reeds, a student in Maya’s class, fights against Donleavy’s racist words with his own valedictory speech entitled “To Be or Not To Be” and singing Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, which is also known as the Negro National