I Know Why the Caged Word Sings (1/3)

With the same teacher who complained about how every story is a rip-off of the Lord of the Rings, my Language Arts class read a portion in class of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou to learn how to annotate.

My copy of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Although it was nonfiction, which teenagers usually don't like reading, it was still interesting because it was an autobiography, laying out a narrative style of writing. I hated it whenever I had to research a person for a school project, because I felt that all biographies did was state what a person did on the surface. Someone may have inspired and helped others wholeheartedly, but whatever way the author put it felt sugar-coated, and I sometimes felt that the person acted nice only to impress readers in their biographies. Autobiographies were different. The author knows how they felt during their lives, and they can remember it in more detail than any other observer and scribe. I can learn about the person in their shoes. I can listen to a person's story from the heart, not just a portion of textbook history.

Even though this book won't be just a portion of textbook history, it's still a portion of important history. I know this book talks a lot about the oppression of African Americans in the early 1900s. As a high school student, I've heard, read, and learned a lot about oppressions of many different ethnicities, with the Civil Rights movement most discussed. If I wanted to be completely honest, I want to stop listening to teachers and presentors trying to teach me more about this subject. I don't want to hear it from them, I want to hear it from people who have experienced it, are related to or know people who have experienced it. Records and statistics about this topic are still written in my brain as "Disgustingly Horrid to Infinity and Beyond," and it's going to stay that way, so more information in that point of view isn't going to really teach me much. However, to listen to it from people who know how it feels will actually touch my heart and allow me to comprehend these events to a different level. As an ethnic minority in this country, I recall not really being able to connect when people of different ethnicites from mine tried to explain how my ethnic group feels at certain times. However, when I read stories of people from my ethnic group talk about certain events, I smile to myself, thinking "Wow, someone understands."

I'm really looking forward to this book. Hope I find a Panacea!