Before she won her multitudes of awards and honors, Maya was raised in rural Stamps, Arkansas by her grandmother and uncle during the depression. Maya Angelou was a poet and Nobel laureate who once gave an address at President Clinton's inauguration. Maya Angelou tipped me $20, and I never even read her fucking book. Instead, I hauled her six or seven massive bags inside, into the elevator, and up to her room on the fifth floor of the historic Landmark Inn. If I'd remained outdoors another hour or so, I suppose I may've proven her right. In fact, the only thing grander than the bus itself was the mink coat on the elderly black woman exiting it, and I'll never forget the words she spoke to my soaked skinny ass, there on the frozen sidewalk of my youth: Even to this day, I've still yet to see a grander one. Stepping out into the sub-zero winds, I saw before me the grandest tour bus I'd ever seen in my whole entire life. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, 'hey, there's a VIP coming in, put on your bellboy hat and head out front.' I didn't put on my bellboy hat because I didn't have one - just the same dirty, drenched apron I wore every day in that year or two between high school and college, at least whenever I wasn't sitting in my shitty little apartment, or else wasting time and brain cells someplace else.

It was some random gray day in Marquette, Michigan, must've been the winter of '00, and I was washing dishes as usual at the downtown Landmark Inn. I must confess I've read precious little Angelou in my time, but I'll never forget the day she tipped me $20. Poetic and powerful, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings will touch hearts and change minds for as long as people read. Years later, in San Francisco, Maya learns that love for herself, the kindness of others, her own strong spirit, and the ideas of great authors (“I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare”) will allow her to be free instead of imprisoned. Louis, Maya is attacked by a man many times her age-and has to live with the consequences for a lifetime.

Sent by their mother to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother in a small Southern town, Maya and her brother, Bailey, endure the ache of abandonment and the prejudice of the local “powhitetrash.” At eight years old and back at her mother’s side in St. Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic beloved worldwide. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings captures the longing of lonely children, the brute insult of bigotry, and the wonder of words that can make the world right. Here is a book as joyous and painful, as mysterious and memorable, as childhood itself. Her life story is told in the documentary film And Still I Rise, as seen on PBS’s American Masters.

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