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I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a 1969 autobiographical novel about the early years of author Maya Angelou's life. The autobiography explores the isolation and loneliness faced by Angelou, and the attributes of her character that helped her cope with the prejudices of society. Quite graphic in nature, the text deals with issues including childhood, rape, racism, and sexism, some of which has generated controversy.

The novel is the first in a six-volume autobiographical series, covering her childhood and young adult experiences. Later books in the series include Wouldn't Take Nothing For My Journey Now, All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes, and A Song Flung Up to Heaven.

The novel follows Marguerite's (later called My, or Maya, by her brother) young life and the struggles she undergoes in the racist South. Abandoned by their parents at an early age, she and her older brother, Bailey, live with their grandmother "Momma", and her crippled uncle in Stamps, Arkansas, where her grandmother operates a general store.

Many of the problems Marguerite encounters in her childhood stem from the prejudices of her white neighbors who treat her family at the best with cool respect and, at the worst, blatant contempt. Furthermore, despite the fact that Momma is wealthier than most of the white neighbors, the white neighbors' children hassle them insolently, one girl even revealing her pubic hair to Momma. These events, along with Marguerite's feelings of inferiority to other white and black children, despite her above-average intelligence, cause her to initially start out as a self-conscious and short-tempered girl.

A turning point in the novel occurs when Marguerite and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears at their home to send them to live with their mother in St. Louis. While there, Marguerite, only eight years old at that time, is raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, which traumatizes her. Mr. Freeman is later murdered after escaping jail time, which further burdens her with guilt and causes her to withdraw from all other people except for her brother. Even after moving back to Stamps, Marguerite remains reclusive until she meets the amiable Bertha Flowers who supplies her with books to encourage her love of reading, and coaxes her out of her shell.

As Marguerite grows up, she experiences many other instances of racism, including an old white woman who shortens her name to "Mary," hence reducing her name to a more common one; white speakers at a graduation ceremony who disparage the black audience by implying their limited job opportunities, and the white town dentist's refusal to operate on Marguerite's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him of a loan he owed her.

Finally, when even her brother Bailey is disturbed by the discovery of the corpse of a black man that some white men took pleasure in seeing, Momma decides to move the family to live permanently with their mother in San Francisco, California for their mental well-being.

Marguerite, now more frequently called "Maya," enters adolescence, but not without awkwardness. She becomes worried that she might be a lesbian (which she equates with being a hermaphrodite), and initiates sexual intercourse with a teenage boy she knows only vaguely to dispel this fear. The encounter causes her to become pregnant which she hides from her family until in her eighth month of pregnancy to be able to graduate from high school. Maya gives birth to a beautiful baby boy and begins her trek to adulthood by accepting her role as a mother to her newborn son.

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Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Ann Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, on April 4, 1928. In 1931, when she was three years old, her parents divorced and she and her 4-year old brother, Bailey, were sent alone, by train, to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. While living with her grandmother, Angelou participated in a wide variety of dance classes including tap, jazz, foxtrot, and salsa. After four years in Stamps, the children returned to their mother's care. At age eight, Angelou confessed that her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freemen, had sexually abused her, and Angelou's uncles beat the man to death. Horrified by the outcome, she became mute, believing, as she has stated, that "the power of [her] words led to someone's death." She remained nearly mute for another five years, at which point her mother sent the children to live with their grandmother once again. Angelou credits a close friend in Stamps, Mrs. Flowers, for helping her "re-find her voice." She began to speak again at age 13. During one of her first bouts of activism, Angelou persisted at age 15 in becoming the first black person hired on the San Francisco streetcars.

In 1940, while spending the summer with her father in the Los Angeles area, Angelou was assaulted by her father's live-in girlfriend, which led to her running away from home and spending a month as a resident of a junkyard that housed other homeless children. She finally called her mother and was sent a ticket back to San Francisco, but her month of homelessness had a profound effect on her way of looking at the world. In Caged Bird, she notes: "After a month my thinking processes had so changed that I was hardly recognizable to myself. The unquestioning acceptance of my peers had dislodged the familiar insecurity...After hunting down unbroken bottles and selling them with a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Oklahoma, I was never again to sense myself so solidly outside the pale of the human race. The lack of criticism evidenced by our ad hoc community influenced me, and set a tone of tolerance in my life."

Angelou became pregnant at the age of 16 and gave birth to her son, Guy Raphael Johnson, who also became a poet. To support herself, she sang, with an affected Caribbean accent, at Enrico Banducci's famed San Francisco nightclub, The Purple Onion. During this phase of her career she released a record album on the Liberty Record label entitled "Miss Calypso." It has since become a highly sought-after collectible among fans of record albums by celebrities.

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