The siblings’ father, Bailey Johnson, re-enters their lives with a bang. On the bright side, Maya and her brother did receive a good education from their uncle and Maya fell in love with reading when she read William Shakespeare for the first time. Stamps really wasn’t the right place for her at all. Maya disliked the treatment of black people that she saw throughout Stamps. For example, in Chapter Five, she describes how a few white girls would come into the store to torment Momma and be rowdy and rude. The South is largely known for being conservative and racist, and Maya faced that reality significantly as a child. Maya’s time growing up in the South ultimately caused a lot of self-hatred within her. This moment definitely led Maya to think of Stamps in a whole new different way. Now, this must be traumatizing for Maya and Bailey to watch just because of their Uncle’s skin color and the “threat” he poses, he could have a good chance of being killed. Some of the boys’ll be coming over later”. A crazy nigger messes with a white lady today. The Ku Klux Klan may be coming tonight, so she must hide him very well: “Annie, tell Willie he better lay low tonight. The sheriff warns Momma that she better hide Uncle Willie, since there is suspicion all over town regarding a black man having an intimate relationship with a white woman. For example, Maya and Bailey witness a sheriff talking to Momma. They witness a many quite sickening incidents that were considered reasonable in the time and place: 1930’s America in the South. However, life in Stamps is not easy for them at all. Furthermore, their parents sent them there to live in a rural community that could be more fitting for them. Their parents were newly divorced and this decision made it much easier for the children to live in an environment that was not so broken. Maya was only three years old when she and her brother, Bailey, were sent off to live with their Grandma Annie also known as “Momma” and their Uncle Willie in Stamps, Arkansas. This brings great embarrassment to her, adding yet another event to her unfortunate tales of being a southern black girl. Afterwards, she trips on the way to the bathroom and pees on herself.

She refers to herself as a nuisance to her race, wishing that she was white and saying that she was cursed by a fairy godmother as if this was a fairytale that gone wrong. She states, “Wouldn’t they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond”. For church, she imagines herself wearing a “lavender, taffeta dress.” With this image, she visions herself as a “movie star” and how that contributes to her dream of being a white girl.

In the prologue, Maya is reciting a poem to herself for church and forgets it immediately. Get custom essays I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

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