Hi! My next
blogs are going to be about Maya Angelou’s autobiography “I Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings.” When she was three years old and her brother Bailey was four, they
were sent to Stamps, Arkansas to live with their grandmother which they, in
short time, began to call Momma and their Uncle Willie who was handicapped. Momma
owned and worked at the Store were Maya and Bailey spent a lot of their time in.
Throughout the years that Maya spent with her grandmother, she saw and heard
about many conflicts between black people and white people who she viewed as
non-human because of how they treated the Negros and because of their physical appearances.
She also talks about Reverend Thomas (that Maya didn’t like so much) who sometimes
visited them at the Store and about the experience he had once had in church.
It happened on a Sunday, Reverend Thomas was preaching when suddenly a women called
Sister Monroe began to say “Preach it!” at loud and began to follow the
Reverend across the church. After that day, they had called the event “the
incident”.
Quote 1
“Until I
was thirteen and left Arkansas for good, the Store was my favorite place to be.
Alone and empty in the mornings, it looked like an unopened present from a
stranger. Opening the front door was pulling the ribbon off the unexpected
gift. The light would come in softly (we faced north), easing itself over the
shelves of mackerel, salmon, tobacco, thread. It fell flat on the big vat of
lard and by noontime during the summer the grease had softened to a thick soup.
Whenever I walked into the Store in the afternoon, I sensed that it was tired.”
(p. 16)
When I read
this part of the book, I realized that the author used many literary devices.
When she compares the Store with an unopened present, she is using a simile.
She is also using personification when she says that the Store felt tired in
the afternoon. I think that she used these literary devices to make us
understand better how she felt when she was in the Store and how much it meant
for her.
Quote 2
"But I
couldn’t force myself to think about them as people. People were Mrs. LaGrone,
Mrs. Hendricks, Momma, Reverend Sneed, Lillie B, and Louise and Rex. Whitefolks
couldn´t be people because their feet were too small, their skin was too white
and see-throughy, and they didn’t walk on the balls of their feet the way
people did—they walked on their heels like horses.
People were those
who lived on my side of town. I didn’t like them all, or, in fact, any of them very
much, but they were people. These others, the strange pale creatures that lived
in their alien unlife, weren’t considered folks. They were whitefolks." (p. 26)
Black
people have been judged and mistreated in many ways by white people. But not
only have white people hated black people, but also black people have judged
and seen white people in a different way. And in this quote, this is
demonstrated. And it’s surprising that even a little girl thought of whitefolks
as non-human because of how they looked and treated Negros.
Conclusion
What I like
about this book is that it shows real conflicts in which black people are being
mistreated by white people but they confront the situation in a calm manner and
are able to continue their lives as they normally did. I enjoy the writing style
of Maya Angelou because she uses many details to describe her feelings, the settings
and the people she is talking about in the book to make the reader have a more
clear view of what she is talking about. I look forward to keep reading the
book and to know what Maya is going to do if she leaves Arkansas.
