Who Is Maya Angelou's I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings?

In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, Maya Angelou describes her experiences growing up as an insecure black girl in Stamps, Arkansas in the 1930’s and later moving to California in the 1940’s. Maya’s parents divorced when she was three years old. Her older brother, Bailey and Maya were sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother, Anne Henderson. Anne, whom they called Momma, ran the only general store in the black section of Stamps, Arkansas. Momma became a strong moral female figure in Maya’s childhood. Maya struggled with being rejected by her parents. Maya found herself troubled by her opinion that she would never measure up to the white girls in Stamps. Maya also felt inferior to other black girls as well. One Sunday, Maya was to read a poem in church. She got so scared she was not able to finish the poem. Because she felt like a failure, she ran from the church laughing, crying and wetting herself. When members of the congregation made fun of her, Bailey came to her rescue. Bailey used his charm to put the people in their place.
Louis, Missouri, to live with their mother, Vivian. Vivian lived a wild life and worked in gambling parlors. Mr. Freeman, Vivian’s live-in boyfriend, sexually molested Maya and later raped her. After they went to court, Mr. Freeman was murdered. It was thought that he was murdered by criminals in Maya’s family. After the murder of Mr. Freeman, Maya continued to feel the guilt and shame of being molested and raped. She felt somehow responsible for his death because she denied that he had molested her before he raped her in court. Because Maya felt she was the mouth of the devil, she stopped speaking to anyone but Bailey. Her family first thought her silence was because of the trauma of being raped. As time passed, her family became angry with her because they saw her silence as