I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Study Questions
1. What leads you to believe the events described in the Preface are painful to recall?

2. At what church was the narrator performing?

3. What color was the narrator’s Easter dress?

4. How had the narrator kept her legs soft?

5. What was the line she forgot?

6. How did the children react to the narrator’s forgetting her line?

7. How did Marguerite further humiliate herself?

8. Why did the narrator believe she would be whipped?

9. Who tried to help Marguerite when she forgot her lines?

10. Why was Marguerite laughing even though she knew that she would get a whipping?

Answers
1. The narrator says that she had not so much forgotten as she had not been...