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"I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"

Maya Angelou, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells her story of how and when she grew up. In Arkansas at the time of Maya Angelou's childhood, many things were looked upon as bad or unfavored. Maya's problem was that she was black and a woman. Her novel depicts her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas with her grandmother and in St. Louis, Missouri, where her mother resided. At the age of three Maya and her four-year old brother, Bailey, were turned over to the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps. Southern life was filled with humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, racial separation of the town, and the many incidents in belittling blacks.
In the world Maya grows up in, beauty is narrowly defined as being white, with blond hair
and blue eyes. Maya believes as a child that being black means being ugly, and thinks of her
appearance as a "black......

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Approximate Word Count: 670
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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