I bought I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings in anticipation of Black History Month, but was working through Murakami's 1Q84 at the time and became delayed by a month. It's Asian American & Pacific Islander Month now, but hey, I'm asian anyway, so let me pass this moment on to another minority. Seems fair.
Based on the title, I had always ignorantly pictured the content of this book to be painful and dark, and for the writing to be sing-songy like a plantation song. It didn't appeal to me before because of these baseless assumptions, but of course as soon as I started reading, I realized it's not.
The tone is easy and approachable, upbeat and inviting. It's written in the cool voice of an adolescent without hefty cares, and even the most devastating section in which Angelou recounts child rape soon passes like a distant memory and is again replaced with the daily joys and confusions of a young girl just growing up in an adult world.
The jarringly abrupt ending felt strange to me, but hopeful. I wanted more, but I suppose that's what the end of childhood is.
In the end, one excerpt really stood out to me, and felt poignantly relevant to the conversations happening recently:
"The Black female is assaulted in her tender years by all those common forces of nature at the same time that she is caught in the tripartite crossfire of masculine prejudice, white illogical hate and Black lack of power.
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance."
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