Why I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings?

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the autobiography of Maya Angelou, an African American woman raised in the early 1900s, and an inspiration to all. As a child, she knew her parents had sent Bailey and her to live with their grandmother, and believed it was her fault. At the young age of six, she meets her father again who takes Bailey and her to meet their mother in St. Louis. For the first few years of her life, she suffered from the guilt of being sent away and worse believing that her mother had died, therefore she would never see her again. If this was not enough for young brain and heart to cope with, her life took a plunge downhill in St. Louis due to the actions of her mother’s boyfriend, Mr. Freedman. Once upon arriving in St. Louis, her brother, Bailey is enamored by the city and their mother Vivian Baxter but Maya could not feel any less welcomed. The bustling of the city was foreign and uncomforting and no one, not even Bailey could help her causing her to sink in this feeling of loneliness and
giving her nightmares. One day, Mr. Freedman touches her inappropriately and Maya excuses this because for those few minutes she wasn’t feeling lonely. When Mr. Freedman rapes her and is arrested, she understands the severity of the situation leading her to stop talking and being sent back to Stamps, Arkansas.
Arriving in Stamps, Maya is a different person, a traumatized and matured girl.
Eventually, she goes to work for Mrs. Cullinan and meets Miss Glory, a subservient African American who attempts to find the best in everything, even losing her identity and dignity. Her birth name was Hallelujah but Mrs. Cullinan renamed her Glory and she accepted this quietly with the excuse that it sounds better and is shorter. This incident occurred with Maya as well but instead of remaining quiet, she retaliated and finds a way to be fired. Maya shows herself in this chapter (Chapter Sixteen) to have a hidden fire. She valued her dignity and esteem therefore she does not sugarcoat the situation and immediately leaves. Miss Glory, in Maya’s eyes, was a fallen woman, who had nothing left, not her self-respect or independence and fears to be like her. This leads to her pity toward Miss Glory, who is unable to see that life for her could be better without servicing Mrs.
Cullinan.
Readers should analyze Maya’s ambivalence toward Miss Glory as a mixture of compassion and fear; she sympathized the woman for letting herself be treated like dirt on a shoe but also Maya fears of the difficulties of being an African American girl in society. At her age, white girls are taught to be prim and proper, ladylike and they have few opportunities in society to hold a job of high position. Maya, being black and female would face even more problems and though she may not understand what these problems might be, she knows she does not want to be like Miss Glory. Submissive, silent, emotionally abused are words to describe Miss Glory and everything Maya wishes to never be. She feared, in other words, to lose herself. She did not want to lose the significance of her name to be called “Mary” because Mrs. Cullinan was too lazy to say her full name. In short, Maya is building a fire in her that will cause the publishing of this novel later on in life.