Angelou, Maya - Ernece B. Kelly
ERNECE B. KELLY
[I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings] is a poetic counterpart for the more scholarly [Growing Up in the Black Belt: Negro Youth in the Rural South by Charles S. Johnson]. For it is an autobiographical novel about a "too big Negro girl, with nappy black hair, broad feet and a space between her teeth that would hold a number-two pencil" … scratching out the early outlines of self in a small Arkansas town.
Miss Angelou confidently reaches back in memory to pull out the painful childhood times: when children fail to break the adult code, disastrously breaching faith and laws they know nothing of; when the very young swing easy from hysterical laughter to awful loneliness; from a hunger for heroes to the voluntary Pleasure-Pain game of wondering who their real parents are and how long before they take them to their authentic home.
Introducing herself as Marguerite, a "tender-hearted" child, the author allows her story to...
[The entire page is 781 words long]
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