I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Reprint. Pp. [vi], 281, [1, ads]. Pictorial wraps.

Publisher's bumf laid in. Hint of toning to text-block edges, else Fine.

Book title taken from Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "Sympathy" (1899). Nominated for a National Book Award in 1970, and never out of print, Time Magazine listed it in 2011 as one of the 100 best and most influential books written in English since 1923. Named by Modern Library as one of the 100 best non-fiction books of the 20th century.

African-American author's highly acclaimed first instalment in her seven-volume autobiography. Covers her early years when as a three-year-old Maya is sent to live with her pious grandmother in Arkansas and ends when she herself becomes a mother at the age of sixteen. In the race-riddled Deep South, Angelou takes her first faltering steps to transforming herself into the self-possessed, dignified woman she was to become. A harrowing episode of being raped aged eight by her mother's lover, has led to multiple attempts to ban the book across school libraries in America. "[A] biblical study of life in the midst of death." –James Baldwin