Sam Reviews "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou

Memoirs are hard to rate because some stories are better than others, but overall this was a very nice read. Maya lead a very interesting life even before she turned 18 and I was never bored reading her stories. I'm a little disappointed that my high school never made me read this book, so I experienced it for the first time at 23, but I'm glad I did. I'd recommend this to anyone who already knows they like memoirs, but also to people who are just starting to get into them (like me!).

"I hadn't so much forgotten as I couldn't bring myself to remember. Other things were more important."

"[The town]  closed in around us,  as a real mother embraces a stranger's child. Warmly,  but not too familiarly."

"I could feel the evilness flowing through my body and waiting,  pent up, to rush off my tongue if I tried to open my mouth. I clamped my teeth shut,  I'd hold it in. If it escaped,  wouldn't it flood the world and all the innocent people?"

"I have never known if Momma sent for us, or if the St.Louis family got fed up with my grim presence. There is nothing more appalling than a constantly morose child."

"I was liked,  and what a difference it made. ...  Childhood's logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute).  I didn't question why Mrs. Flowers had singled me out for attention."

"For a few seconds it was a tossup over whether I would laugh (imagine being named Hallelujah) or cry (imagine letting some white woman rename you [Glory] for her convenience."

"Children's talent to endure stems from their ignorance of alternatives."

"She was our mother and belonged to us. She was never mentioned to anyone because we simply didn't have enough of her to share."

"Bailey was talking so fast he forgot to stutter."

"What child can resist a mother who laughs freely and often?"

"Through food we learned that there were other people in the world."

"I concerned myself less about everything and everyone. I often thought of the tedium of life once one had seen all its surprises."

"I had known all along the inevitable outcome and that I dared not poke into his knapsack of misery,  even with the offer to help him carry it."

"My tears were ... for the hopelessness of all mortals who live on the sufferance of Life. In order to avoid this bitter end,  we would all have to be born again,  and born with the knowledge of alternatives. Even then?"

"Nat King Cole warned the world to "straighten up and fly right."  As if they could,  as if human  beings could make a choice."

"Even as the scene was being enacted I realized the imbalance in his values. He thought I was giving him something, and  the fact of the matter was that it was my intention to take something from him.  His good looks and popularity had made him so inordinately conceited that they blinded him to that possibility."