The Ku Klux Klan-casually referred to as “the boys” by the town sheriff-lynch black men for even looking at a white woman the wrong way. In the memoir, Maya Angelou carefully describes and records the reality that interacting with a white person in the segregated American south is dangerous for a black person. At the same time, she teaches her grandchildren never to speak disrespectfully to a white person, even if the person was “powhitetrash”-in other words a white person with very little stature. Marguerite is taught by her grandmother to fear and avoid white people, and to think of them as godless, and not to be trusted. Young Marguerite grows up in the segregated American south but I Know why the Caged Bird Sings is not simply an investigation of the history and effects of segregation: it is an incisive and honest examination of race, inequality, and identity.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |