Study Guide: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
1-2
At church, lavender taffeta dress that was silk. Dreamed of looking like a white movie star in it but
felt skinny and ugly once it was on.
2-3
Dreams of “them” realizing that she is beautiful white and not ugly black.
3
The intense imagery of having to urinate while at church. How is it described?
***
All of these thoughts and images shared by Marguerite in this opening section:
-What do they say about how she feels about herself and about religion? She is in church, but is
she thinking at all about religion?
Chapter 1
5
Marguerite and Bailey Johnson Jr. are sent by their father and mother from Long Beach California
to their grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson (their father’s mother) in Stamps Arkansas, when the
marriage is ending.
Remarks about the segregated South and the North reneging on its economic promise are made.
***
Difference in Northern and Southern economies.
6
Stamps accepts the children cautiously
Lived in the “Store” with Momma (Grandmother). Provided lunch for workers of saw mill and
cotton gin. The Store became the center of “Negro” life in Stamps
***
Discuss the word, Negro
6-7
She gets to know Stamps very well. Sees cotton workers carried back to old slave plantations.
***
Discuss slave plantations.
7
Description of how grandmother gets up at 4:00 everyday without an alarm clock and thanking
God for another day.
Describes unusual mixture of smells in the store in the morning.
7-8
Describes the workers coming in in the mornings to get food. They would boast and joke about
how much work they would accomplish while picking up lunch.
8
The end of the day would have the workers disappointed, disgruntled and sad with the day’s work
9
Sums up how cotton picking time reflected Black southern life—perhaps constant hope in the face
of constant disappointment.
***
How is the cotton ball a good symbol for contrast? Soft and fluffy but filled with sharp seeds.
Chapter 2
10
Learning the times tables with the speed of Chinese children on their abacuses in San Fran.
***
Discuss the Chinese in San Fran
Description of the pot bellied stove in the store
The way a crippled Uncle Willie (Dropped when he was young. Head trauma?) would force Bailey
and Marguerite to perfect their homework for fear of the stove. (EDUCATION).
10-11 Learning something by heart (like times tables without understanding the significance (because you
have no alternative. Good or Bad?
11
How does Maya Angelou describe Uncle Willie as a cripple man? He could not pretend he was
crippled and he was proud/sensitive in a place where underemployed, strong black man made fun
of him.
11-13 Description of the one time that Uncle Willie tried to pretend that he was not crippled—in front
of the strangers who had wandered into the store. For one day, as a prisoner would like to leave
the penitentiary, Willie wanted not to be cripple.
13-14 Marguerite describes how Shakespeare was her first love but she saved her passion for the black
writers
14
She notes how Bailey and she had to memorize a scene from a black writer instead of The
Merchant of Venice because her grandmother would have had a problem with a white writer.
Chapter 3
15
Description of weighing grains and such in the store perfectly measured without checking.
Description of the chocolate kisses and pineapple rings that she loved so deeply.
16
Description of her store as her favorite place until she left Stamps when she was 13. She
PERSONIFIES the store by referring to it as tired halfway through the day. She also uses the
simile of an unopened present to describe it.
17
Description of the way Bailey and she used to feed the animals for their chores.
18
Description of how the sheriff would come over to warn when the Klan would be out looking for
a particular “nigger” and that Uncle Willie should hide. Description of the fear that would ensue.
17-18 Description of the “Boys”—the Klan—and what a horror they actually were.
18-19 The description of hiding Uncle Willie under vegetables in the wall. The Klan never came into
their yard that night.
Chapter 4
20
She describes how suits made men look a little more feminine and a little less threatening. She like
it.
20-21 Description of Mr. McElroy, how he wore a suit, didn’t go to church for which the children
admired him, talked to uncle Willie and would give the kids one greeting a day. Kids would play in
his yard under his chinaberry tree and that was all right.
21
Anachronism
22
She loved Bailey and he always stood up for her.
“…then he would ask, in a voice like cooling bacon grease…”
22-23 Describes what a hero her brother, Bailey, was to her.
24
Description of slaughtering and preserving. Everything that could be preserved was.
“the smokehouse was cousin-close.”
25
Going into “whitefolksville” to the butcher was like going into man-eating animals territory
25-26 Description of how she saw white people as a child; they weren’t really people.
Chapter 5
27
According to Momma, children were not allowed to be impudent or dirty.
27-28 Description of having to clean up as a child and the consequences for not doing so.
28
“Powhitetrash children” not understanding proper ways of addressing others.
28-29 Description of the way the family would have to obey and behave properly even when the
“powhitetrash” children came into the store and behaved rudely.
29-33 Description of the white trash kids who come to mock and make fun of Grandma while
Marguerite has to stay inside and watch. Grandma just keeps humming through it all. Takes the
wind out of their sails. Marguerite gets extremely frustrated but realizes in the end that Grandma
won the contest.
What is this symbolism of the design that Marguerite makes, is messed up by the white trash kids
and then has to remake?
Chapter 6
34-36 Description of Reverend Howard Thomas, the presiding Elder over the churches of this area of
Arkansas. The kids hated him. Fat and ugly, he always popped up right as dinner was being
served. He would always eat the best parts.
36
The children would sneak out to listen to the new news and gossip between Rev Thomas and
Uncle Willie while they were supposed to be memorizing Bible lessons.
36-37 Bailey would hear some of the horrific things to happen to black men by the local whites. For
example, one man had his genetalia cut off and stuffed in his mouth for looking at a white woman.
***
The taboo of black men even looking at white women, but it was okay for white men to rape black
women and then try to hide the results.
Also, where Marguerite first hears of people “doing it”; of course, she doesn’t know what “it” is.
37-38 Description of the luscious Sunday dinners and the way Rev. Thomas would preach through the
blessing until it had become cold.
38
Description of how the older people knew when the children were old enough move up to the
intermediate section of the church—when their legs were too long for the smaller pews.
39-45 Description of Sister Monroe in their Episcopal Church feeling the spirit so much that she runs for
and grabs Rev. Taylor as he preaches.
***
Talk about religion in Arkansas: manifestations of Christianity, snake worship, talking in tongues,
more interactive worship, etc.
Chapter 7
46
Grandma had been married three times: Johnson, Henderson and Murphy.
***
Great description of Grandma as a good role model for Maya Angelou—beautiful, strong and
quiet.
47
Grandma would lead the church in song.
***
Taught Bailey and Maya how to behave in front of white people. She was a realist about the ways
they had to live in that world.
***
Small story of how a black man “assaulted” white womanhood and how Momma came to be called
“Mrs.” once by whites.
Chapter 8
49
Description of how prejudiced Stamps Arkansas was—“so prejudiced a Black could not buy
vanilla ice cream except on the 4th of July.
***
***
Description of how wealthy and wasteful the whites were.
Maya’s belief that God was white.
50
The Great Depression seemed to seep slowly into the black community.
***
The Great Depression seeped into the black area “slowly, like a thief with misgivings.”
51
Description of how Momma allowed people to pay in trade during the Great Depression in order
to keep the store open.
52-53 Why did the fact that Maya and Bailey’s parents sent them Christmas gifts make them cry?
--Thought they were dead; couldn’t bare that they were just left.
53
We find out that when Bailey was four and Maya was three, their parents put tags on them in Long
Beach California and sent them to Stamps Arkansas like they were two packages for Annie.
Chapter 9
54
Dad shows up in a fancy car. Everyone fawns over him.
55
He spoke “proper” English and sounded fake.
***
Conflicting feelings of pride and distance about Bailey Sr.
***
He was popular; everyone came by to see him; he looked rich and powerful.
56
Eventually, father is going to leave but he announces that he is going to take the children with him.
Again, confused feelings about this.
57
Momma is clearly sad that they are leaving. Prepares them to go; tells them to be good.
57-58 On the car ride, they see the same old little towns over and over. Bailey is up front with dad,
imitating him, “driving” and sucking up. Maya is in the back relatively disinterested.
58
Bailey Sr. laughs and sounds like a white man.
58
Bailey announces that they are going to St. Louis to see their mother. The kids are terrified.
***
Father starts to jokingly threat that he is going to tell mother that they did not want to see her.
59
They pull into a big, dirty, sooty St. Louise
***
Maya tries to secretly communicate with her brother in Pig Latin but realizes that her father
understands it too.
***
Great description of the incredible suspense that the kids felt in waiting for their mother to come
out and receive them.
60
Description of her mother as the most beautiful thing she had ever seen.
Chapter 10
61
Grandmother Baxter (on mother’s side) was QUADROON or OCTOROON. She was nearly
white.
***
that grandfather had undying loyalty to his family even in spite of contradictory evidence.
62
the black section of St. Louis had all the drinking gambling prostitution. Hard to believe that it
was illegal. Lots of questionable characters with creative names.
***
Discuss prohibition.
62
Grandmother Baxter had a lot of pull in the community with the crooks and the police. She could
pull in the vote.
***
Talk about collecting the VOTE.
62-63 Description of the new foods in St. Louis and how they compared to Stamps.
63
the kids find that they are miles ahead of their peers in school in St. Louis. The reading and work
in Stamps prepared them well.
***
Bailey loved demonstrating his knowledge and their ignorance.
64
Teachers were more formal in St. Louis than in Stamps because teachers lived with families in
Stamps.
64-65 Description of meeting mom after school in a tavern to eat boiled shrimp, watch her dance, and
drink soft drinks with the local riff raff.
65
The kids learned how to dance with their mother here.
66-67 Description of their mother’s family (brothers, especially). They didn’t take insult. They fought in
a fierce way. The Baxter family was tight and would defend each other until death.
68-69 They were fairly at-home with their mother. Their mother lived with Mr. Freeman who was fat.
He was lucky to be with their beautiful mother.
Chapter 11
70
Maya doesn’t care much for big city life. Mr. Freeman brought in necessities and mom earned a
little extra money dealing card games, etc.
71
They would wait for mother to come home. Mr. Freemen would eat and wait. Maya and Bailey
would read voraciously.
72
Maya felt sorry for Mr. Freeman. Both of the kids had a hard time adjusting. Bailey stuttered and
Maya had nightmares. She would be asked to come into bed and sleep with mom and Mr.
Freeman.
72-73 One morning when mom leaves, Mr. Freeman molests Maya in bed. She does not know what he
is doing. The description of it. He holds her after and she likes being held.
74
Then he tells her that if she ever tells about what happened, he will kill Bailey.
***
A great description of how she is confused by adults; doesn’t understand them.
75
Also offers a good description of how this is the first time she has had physical contact and how
confusing that is.
75
She wanted to be noticed by Mr. Freeman after this but he doesn’t seem to notice her.
75
She confuses her desire for physical contact and his desire for sexual contact.
76
She begins to bury herself in reading and Saturdays at the local library now that she has gotten a
library card.
Chapter 12
77-78 Description of the rape.
78
78
Mr. Freeman remarks again that if she tells what he does, he will kill Bailey.
“Then there was the pain. A breaking and entering when even the senses are torn apart. The act of
rape on an eight-year-old body is a matter of the needle giving because the camel can’t. The child
gives, because the body can, and the mind of the violator cannot.”
78-79 Freeman tells her to go to the library. She is sick. Comes home, goes to bed. Freeman stands in
her doorway reminding her of the threat.
81
After mother tells Maya that Mr. Freeman moved out, Maya wonders if she can tell what MR.
Freeman did and WHAT SHE ALLOWED.
***
She is really going through post traumatic stress syndrom.
82
Mom finds the stained panties.
Chapter 13
83
In the hospital, Maya is told that she has to tell. Bailey says that he won’t let Mr. Freeman find
him/kill him.
***
She tells.
***
Mr. Freeman is arrested, and the family shows a lot of support.
84
In the courtroom, “overhead fans moved with the detachment of old men.”
84-85 Maya is put on the stand to answer the questions about the rape. When asked if Freeman had
touched her before, she lied, “no.”
85
“The lie lumped in my throat and I couldn’t get air..”
85-86 The defense lawyer makes Maya feel like she is on trial. Freeman gets one year but gets released
immediately.
86
A police officer arrives to tell them that Freeman’s been found dead—kicked to death.
***
Maya feels an overwhelming sense of guilt—as if what she said (her lie) killed him.
87
Grandma Baxter says that Freeman and the rape are not to be mentioned again in her house.
* Is this good?
***
She makes the decision to stop talking for good.
88
Family gets fed up with Maya not being a child and not talking.
***
The children are sent back to Stamps
***
Bailey is terribly depressed at leaving his beautiful mother.
Chapter 14
89
Coming back to Stamps was like crawling into a comfortable cocoon
89-90 The kids were local celebrities after having traveled up to the north.
90-91 Bailey regales the locals with fantastical stories of St. Louis and the North. He lies a lot.
91-92 Maya suspected that Uncle Willie knew about the rape. She felt a bit relieved and ASHAMED at
this. But, she did not want the sympathy of a “cripple.”
Chapter 15
93
For a year Maya hung did not speak. “She sopped around the house, the store, the school and the
church like an old biscuit.”
***
Then, she met Mrs. Bertha Flowers, the lady who threw her her first lifeline.
***
Great description of the confident grace of Mrs. Flowers.
94
Description of the way Maya would be embarrassed at her Grandmother (and her lack of
education) in front of Mrs. Flowers.
95
“Mrs. Flowers made Maya “proud to be a Negro.”
***
One summer afternoon, “sweet-milk fresh in my memory.”
96
Mrs. Flowers prefers that Maya rather than Bailey help carry some things up to her house.
96-97 Grandma embarrasses Maya “stone-dead” when she takes off Maya’s dress to show how well she
sews.
97-98 Mrs. Flowers questions Maya about progress in school and the fact that she does not speak. Maya
does not respond. Flowers offers to lend books but will not accept an excuse for a mishandled
book.
99-101 Maya has lemonade and cookies with Mrs. Flowers and begins her lessons in living. Teaches her
common sense, to hate stupidity but understand illiteracy. Lends her a book. Teaches her beauty
of poetry. Tells her she will have to start reciting poetry for her.
102-103
Grandma freaks out when Maya says “by the way.” In other words, “by the way of Jesus.”
Chapter 16
104
105
Maya talks about beginning to receive debutante training—how pointles and ridiculous it is.
Maya did not take to the ridiculous, tedious work of being a servant in the house of Ms. Viola
Cullinan well. Ms. Glory is the actual servant who is training Maya.
106-107
Description of the condescending white women and how Maya has to serve them.
Description of how the women want to call her Mary. Maya is pissed at this.
108-111
Description of working for the Miss Cullinan and her friends. They rename Maya for their
convenience—Mary. Maya has to purposely break Miss. C’s favorite piece of china to get
fired so that she does not have to work for her anymore.
Chapter 17
112
Description of the sameness of Stamps life punctuated by Saturdays, families coming into town,
kids excited, Uncle Willie handing out peanut patty.
113
Description of the unending weekday chores that the children had to do on Saturdays. Incredible
to Maya that Saturday was her favorite day of the week (childrens’ ignorance of alternatives).
***
One Saturday, Bailey is late coming home from the Rye-al-toh.
114
Momma is worried.
114
Any Southern Black who Has a male member of the family has his/her “heartstrings tied to a
hanging noose.”
***
Maya feels a bit of resentment at everybody’s worry because she feels she has the most to lose if
Bailey is killed.
***
Momma and Maya are going to go down the road to se if they can meet Bailey.
115
Worried, they finally come upon Bailey on the road in the dark.
116
Momma is mad.
***
Bailey seems sad and simply responds, “nothing” when asked what he has been up to.
117
Uncle Willie whips Bailey but Bailey never cries or screams for help.
***
“For days the store was a strange country and we were all newly arrived immigrants.”
***
Bailey is vacant; clearly something is wrong.
***
Bailey finally confesses to Maya that he “saw mother” or a woman who looked like mother in the
movie; she was a white movie star named Kay Francis.
118
Bailey had not reported any of this because their mother “belonged to us” and they did not “have
enough of her” to share.
118-119
???
Eventually Bailey takes Maya to a later movie in order to see “their mother.” The whites
make jokes at the blacks in the film. Maya likes being able to see her mother on the silver
screen. Bailey still broods.
Bailey is sad when he comes home from the movies because he has seen an actor in the movies
that looks just like whom?
HIS MOTHER.
Chapter 18
120-121
Another hard day of work is done; momma Henderson commends the workers at the
store.
121
Maya resents the black workers acceptance at being worked liked animals.
***
Maya is amazed that these wearied workers are going to go to a revivalist meeting that night.
122
Maya is going with momma to the revivalist meeting tonight as well.
***
Description of the revivalist tent out in a field.
***
Description of how the children liked the meetings too because they got the chance to play at
courting.
123
The transitory nature of the tent setting made it difficult for Maya to believe that God
would want a religious ceremony done in his honor there.
123-124
These revival meetings were the one time in the year when all the different sects got
together to worship.
124
Some groups are a bit critical of each other.
124-125
Description of the way the preachers preach and the ways the people respond.
126-128
Description of the sermon, how normally tired people are enlivened and how some of the
blacks hear the sermon as “the whites will get theirs”
128-129
According to Maya, the tone in the sermons is that if black people just accept their position
and work hard in this life, a much better life awaits them in the future.
130
Description of the twenty people saved that night and how it didn’t matter to the ministers
which church they went with. To Maya, this was her first look at this type of Christian
charity.
131
As people walk away from the meeting they gloat in the belief that they are saved and will
live with God in Heaven while white people will burn in Hell.
132
As the people walk home and pass the honky tonk, they heard black music. Interesting, Maya
remarks, that the music coming from this ?morally questionable? Place sounds almost the
same as the music that had been sung at the revivalist meeting just a little ways away. It seems
that these feelings shared in the revivalist meeting infused most of southern black life back
then.
Chapter 19
133
Description of the intense anticipation with which everyone in the store sits around and listens
to the Joe Louis fight (against someone named Carnera). Of course, this is an epic battle between
black and white, good and bad. everyone is at the store buying soft drinks.
134-135
As Lewis starts to have difficulties, all moan. Maya compares the seemingly imminant
defeat to another lynching, black boy being beaten, black woman being raped, etc.
135
??? The following is an example of which poetic device? (Hyperbole) – If Joe lost, we were
back in slavery and beyond help.
136
Joe Louis—the Brown Bomber—wins and proves that they are the strongest people on
earth; the mood is beyond celebration.
***
Oxymoronic: Many people stay with friends after the fight. “It wouldn’t do for a Black man and
his family to be caught on a lonely country road on a night when Joe Loouis had proved that we were the
strongest people in the world.”
Chapter 20
137
Great description of the biggest event of the summer—the picnic fish fry. Everyone is
there.
138
Brilliant description of the mouth-watering food available at the picnic.
139
The gospel choir’s harmony was packed as tight as sardines.
***
Maya doesn’t feel comfortable going to the bathroom by the girls or the women so she finds a little
area by the pond, does her business and then sits relaxing and enjoying.
140
Louise Kendricks happens by. Maya thinks she is the prettiest female in Stamps behind
Mrs. Flowers. Louise wants to know what she is doing. They pretend to be like
governesses from Jane Eyre.
141
The two hold hands and play at “falling into the sky.” They simply play together.
141-142
Great description of spinning around and looking up at the sky while holding onto a
friend.
142
Louise becomes her first friend. They spend hours making up the Tut Language (instead
of relying on Pig Latin). Tut takes the first letter of each nonsensical word to make an
intelligible word.
142-143
Tommy Valdon sends Maya her first Valentine. She thinks that it is a joke, maybe. She
immediately puts up her defenses and gets ready to protect herself.
143-144
Unable to throw the note down the toilet, Maya holds onto it and later shows Louise.
***
Maya is freaked out, scared and overly sensitive about the Valentines thing. Why do you think that
is?
144
Maya and Louise walk along ripping up the valentine.
145
Maya and her classmates are given the chance to make valentines in their class. They then
receive some. The teacher reads them out loud to the students. This is seventh grade.
The note she reads to Maya is from Tommy where he remarks on her tearing up his note.
But, he still likes her.
146
Maya later feels bad about the way she treated Tommy. He later stops noticing her.
Chapter 21
147-148
Bailey starts to explore sex in a little branch fort that he builds behind the house. He
would have girls pull up their dresses and he would wiggle around between their legs. He
starts to fix his eyes on Joyce, a developed girl who makes deliveries for momma.
148-149
One day in the tent, playing “mommy and daddy” Joyce wants to go all the way. Bailey
doesn’t quite understand. Maya, playing baby and guard outside, warns them not to.
Bailey says he won’t speak to her for a month if she doesn’t shut up.
149
Bailey and Joyce’s love affair continues. Bailey keeps stealing things from the store to feed
her. She does less work, hangs around. Eventually momma shoes her away.
150
Joyce eventually disappears out of the picture. Bailey is love sick.
151-152
Maya finds out later through a conversation between momma and Joyce’s aunt, Mrs.
Goodman, that Joyce ran off with arailroad porter that she met at the Store. Bailey doesn’t
care.
Chapter 22
153
$$$
A storm is coming so they all agree to close the Store early and sit in momma’s room (the sitting
room); Maya thinks it’s a perfect night for reading Jane Eyre.
Symbolism of Store (a place to get things, trade things, get what you need)
Street car
Book
Church
Train that goes right through town but doesn’t stop
Maya and the literature she loves
Bailey and Huck Finn
154
A knock comes at the door. It is poor brother George Taylor whose wife had passed away.
Momma invites him in for dinner. Maya thinks that he might want to marry momma.
154-155
Mr. Taylor just stands there looking weirdly at all the whole family.
155
Uncle Willie and momma keep assuring Brother Taylor that he is welcome in their house
anytime.
156
Brother Taylor tries to express how thankful he is. Momma presses a bowl of soup on
him.
157
Momma tells him that he has to cherish the time that he and his wife had together. She
says that it is a shame, however, that they never had children. Taylor echoes, with difficulty
that this is what his wife wanted.
158
Brother Taylor says that his wife said this to him last night (as a ghost). The others in the
room say that it could have been a dream. He gets mad. Maya tells how she hates ghost
stories.
159
Mrs. Taylor’s funeral came last year in June right after final exams. Maya was still friends
with Louise.
160
Sister Taylor would kind of gross Maya out when she came into the store. Maya thought it
is natural for an old person like her to die. Sis Taylor left Maya an “yellow” brooch,
however, so momma said that she had to go to the funeral.
***
Another mention that Maya was “tender-hearted” so momma did not make her go to funerals
generally.
160-161
Description of Mrs. Taylor’s funeral and how the whole thing kind of oogs out Maya.
161
Preacher is getting weird with the sermon—talking directly to Mrs. Taylor in the coffin.
Mr. Taylor is freaking.
162
Wonderful continuing description of not only the funeral but of death.
163
Maya is struck by the bleakness and sureness of death.
***
The significance of ashes to ashes makes sense to Maya for the first time.
***
We return to Brother Taylor’s story of lying down on Mrs. Taylor’s death bed.
164
Mr. Taylor describes how a fat “butterball” angel came to him as he lay there and said it
wanted children
165
Momma said he could have been dreaming. Br. Taylor says that it was unquestionably his
wife’s voice.
165-166
Momma asks Maya to go get the potato fork behind the stove—a million miles away.
Maya doesn’t want to but has to. Tries to figure out how to negotiate the journey.
166
Mr. Taylor seems hypnotized by his own story.
167
Mr. Taylor is getting irritated that the family thinks that maybe he was dreaming. Momma
is saying how maybe Mrs. Taylor was trying to tell Mr. Taylor that he should work with
children or take on a Sunday School class.
168
As quickly as it started the ghost story ended. Things were better. Maya laid a pallet (bed)
for Mr. Taylor and had the sense that momma could command the spirits.
Chapter 23
169-170
Everyone is excited with the impending graduation. Great Description.
170
Description of the terrible state of Lafayette County Training School.
$$$
Talk about the disparity between white and black education.
***
Nearing graduation, the girls become a bit more introspective while the boys become a bit more
out-going. Few would go on to college (some to Agriculture and Mechanical – A & M). Talk
about the options open (not open) for young black people back then.
171-172
***
Description of the clothes preparations for graduation.
Maya is graduating eighth grade.
172-173
Maya is pleased with her coming of age at this time. She is near the top of her class and
not displeased with how she looks.
173
Maya respects the boy that she is near the top with, Henry Reed, because he is able to
function with both children and adults at a very high level.
174
Further description of everyone’s graduation preparations.
174-175
Everybody is nice to Maya today because it is graduation. Bailey gives her a leather-bound
copy of Poe poems and momma gives her a watch. It is perfect so far.
176-177
The family closes the Store and goes to graduation.
177
Maya has the sensethat something unpredictable and bad is going to happen
***
The principal begins talking.
178
Principal announces the keynote speaker, Mr. Edward Donleavy—a white man.
178-179
Donleavy announces how the white school in town is going to get educational
improvements and their school, the black school, will get athletic improvements. Maya is
enraged at the fact that the politicians would propose and accept this.
179
Donleavy simply reminds the audience that they are menial laborers.
180-181
Maya feels like shit at graduation; she is disgusted that humanity can be so shitty.
181-182
Description of how graduation was ruined.
182
Then Henry Reed (top of class) stands and starts singing a poem by James Weldon
Johnson, the “Negro National Anthem”.
184
Amazing description of how Henry’s song edifies all. Again, Maya and others are
profoundly proud to be “Negro.”
Chapter 24
185
Maya has a toothache so bad she wants to die.
***
Momma normally pulls these but there is not enough enamel. They will go to Dr. Lincoln in
Stamps (White) rather than a Negro dentist in Texarkana 25 miles away.. He owes momma a
favor.
186
many whites and blacks owed momma favors from the Great Depression.
***
Maya had never heard of a black going to Dr. Lincoln. She had never been to a doctor before.
186-187
In incredible pain, Maya walks with her mother to whitefolksville. She has to straighten up
a bit.
187-188
They have to wait for the doctor an hour on the back porch.
188
The dentist won’t help “colored” people and gets angry when Annie mentions the owed
favor.
189
He tells Annie in front of Maya that he’d rather stick his hand in a dog’s mouth than a
nigger’s.
***
The doctor retreats inside. Momma tells Maya to go downstairs and wait for her.
189-190
Maya’s (italicized) fantasy of momma going into the office and facing the doctor.
***$$$
Compare to Holden’s fantasies.
191
Momma comes down and says they are going to Dentist Baker in Texarkana.
***
Maya is profoundly proud of her grandmother.
192
Dentist extracts the dteeth and they go home.
192-193
As momma is preparing dinner, she tells Uncle Willie what happened inside with the
dentist. She forced him to pay interest on the money lent (even though their wasn’t any
originally) for the ride to Texarkana. She figured that if he was going to be that nasty, he
was going to pay for it.
Chapter 25
194
Maya gives a small description of Momma and her “African” secretiveness. This is a
description of how a person who is being indirect with you is letting you know that he or she
doesn’t want to talk about something.
194-195
Momma explains that she is taking the kids to California to be with their parents because
that is where they are supposed to be. But Maya knows that something else is up. The
Store becomes a “going-away” factory.
195-196
Maya thinks the reason for sending them away had to do with the “something” that
happened to Bailey when he came into the Store one day freaked out and unwilling to talk
about it. (During this time, he had been imitating movie actors).
196
Bailey asks Uncle Willie and momma what black people had ever done to white people anyway.
Momma and Uncle Willie say nothing.
196-197
Bailey had seen a dead black man fished out of the water. That is why he is freaked out.
197
Again, Bailey wants to know why “they” hate us so much. Willie says, “They don’t really
hate us. They don’t know us.”
197-198
They needed help carrying the man, so they asked Bailey to help carry him to the
calaboose.
198
There are other black men in the calaboose. They don’t want to be in there with a “dead
nigger.”
198-199
Maya is sure that after this experience of Bailey’s is when she started putting together
sending the children to California.
199-200
They decide that Bailey will stay behind one month due to finances. Momma takes Maya
to the West Coast after writing lots of letters to Maya’s parents that they are coming.
Chapter 26
201-202
Maya must grapple with the fact that she is seeing her mother. Her mother is beautiful
once again and makes momma look old fashioned.
202
Their mother sets them up in LA for six weeks (momma, Bailey and Maya) while she gets
an apartment ready up in San Francisco.
202-203
Maya is blown away at how well momma learns to deal in LA.
203-204
Maya and Bailey are devastated by the fact that momma is leaving for Arkansas again.
They travel north to San Francisco with their mother.
204
They all lived for a little while in a dingy Oakland apartment. This time reminded Maya a
lot of St. Louis.
***
They hung out at the playground and didn’t go to church. Maya had to sleep in a shaking bed with
grandmother Baxter.
205-206
Their mother wakes them up in the middle of the night to have a party with them. She is
wild and beautiful.
206
When they ask their mother what she does, she does not give them a direct answer but says
that she is her own boss and has some fun along the way.
206-207
Vivian Baxter (their mother) was self-actualized, not expecting of any sympathy and fair.
207-208
Incident where mother shoots her business partner and he gives her two black eyes (after
he called her a “bitch.”
***
Mother and her new husband (Daddy Clidell—a rich business man) move the family (not extended
family from Oakland to San Francisco).
***
World War II starts
Chapter 27
208
$$$
After the attack on Pearl Harbor, Maya watches San Francisco lose its Japanese population
almost overnight. Stores are taken over by black owners.
Discuss Japanese interment camps.
210
There was not much sympathy from the blacks for the Japanese because the blacks were
benefiting from the Japanese situation.
211-212
Description of San Francisco and how much Maya loves it.
212
For as much as Maya likes San Francisco, however, it is still racist.
Chapter 28
214-215
Maya goes to a black high school where she is way ahead of the others. She eventually
moves to a white high school 60 blocks away in the white part of town where she is one of
three black students. Taking the street car out there fills her with dread and trauma.
215
Coming home at night into the black part of town was always joy and relief.
215-216
At George Washington High School, Maya’s favorite teacher is an information-loving
teacher named Ms. Kirwin. She is respectful of all students and focuses on current events.
216-217
Ms. Kirwin treated Maya the same as everyone else--white or black. Maya liked this. Maya
often wondered if Ms. Kirwin realized that she was the only teacher who Maya
remembered.
217
Maya wins a scholarship to the California Labor School where she learns drama and how
to dance. Maya was embarrassed to dance and embarrassed of her body.
218
Momma, Bailey, Mrs. Flowers, Ms. Kirwin—all these unusual people connect to make up
Maya’s unusual past.
Chapter 29
219
In San Fran, they lived in a huge post-quake house with a strange cast of characters.
220
Daddy Clidell was a man of honor with little education and who owned apartment
buildings. Worked hard and people liked him.
221
Daddy Clidell and his friends knew cards. They would sit around and tell Maya how they
scammed white people out of money. These guys were all con men with weird names.
***
Maya shares her favorite story of Mr. Red Leg and the scam down in Oklahoma.
222-224
Maya relates this story of Mr. Red Leg.
224
Maya speaks with pride of these old, intelligent black con men
225$$$
An excellent description of code switching between white English (in school) and Black
English on the street—that the black child’s education was very different from the white’s.
Chapter 30
226
Maya is going to spend the summer with her father in southern California. Mom helps her
pack. She and her father’s girlfriend decide that they are going to wear white carnations to
identify each other at the train.
227
Maya cannot believe that little Dolores Stockland is her father’s girlfriend. She is small and not as
glamorous as Maya had expected.
***
She was in her early twenties, very serious and believing of everything that Daddy Bailey said.
***
They did not live glamorously but rather in a trailor park. Dolores kept the trailor with the
orderliness of a coffin. She would have been fine if not for intrusions; then Maya came along
228
Dolores was not happy with the way that Maya “did not keep” her room.
228
Daddy Bailey was a cook at a naval hospital (he referred to himself as a medical dietician for the
United States Navy. He cooked well. His best was Mexican food that he went over the boarder to
get.
229
They could have gotten the Mexican food locally but Dolores never would have ventured into the
Mercados and it sounded fancier to say that Daddy Bailey traveled over the boarder for food.
***
Daddy Bailey speaks fluent Sapnish; Maya speaks some. Dolores speaks only perfect English.
***
Daddy Bailey enjoys the fact that Dolores and Maya do not like each other.
229-230
230
Daddy Bailey announces that he and Maya will be taking a trip to Mexico so that she can
practice her Spanish.
Maya is surprised by the invitation because her father has not been particularly affectionate to her.
Dolores is jealous and Maya doesn’t care because she is full of self.
230-231
Maya loves the images and sights that she sees on this trip down to Mexico.
231
They stop by a guard shack. Dad shares a half bottle of liquor with the guard. Dad
“offers” Maya to the guard for a bride and uses her young age as an incitement. Maya tries
to squirm away.
***
They are headed for a town called Ensenada.
232
They drive on through grimy Mexico.
***
They come to a small house where the locals receive Maya with the greatest hospitality.
233
These Mexicans at the house/bar clearly liked and respected Daddy Bailey a lot.
233-234
The local teach Maya how to dance and a boy teaches her how to stick a proverb streamer
to the ceiling with a blood curdling scream.
234
Maya dances and has a great time. She thinks that her drink has been spiked.
***
She can’ find her dad. She starts to freak a bit thinking that he has sold her.
???
Does Maya trust her father?
235-236
Maya finds the car so realizes that her father has not left. She realizes that he is off with
another woman. She sits in the car and grows hysterical that she is going to die because
her father has left her to fend for herself.
236
Dad comes back drunk (aided by the woman) and falls asleep in the back seat of the car.
236-237
After help getting the car pointed in the right direction and after convincing herself that
she can drive, Maya starts driving the car through the mountains of Mexico, trying to head
home.
237
Maya has to figure out how to drive a stick-shift car, but she is so focused on driving the
car that she is not even scared.
238
As she is doing it, Maya is supremely proud of her ability to negotiate the mountain in this
car.
239-240
When she comes to the guard booth, he urges her on, but she smashes into a car. Spanish
is yelled everywhere. She hears the word, Policia, tossed around.
240
The Mexican family sees that this is a young girl taking care of her father and feel bad for
her.
240-241
It takes a while but they successfully wake up her father.
241-242
Dad takes care of everything by going into the guard shack with the guard, the driver and a
bottle. He drives home. Maya feels slighted because he does not recognize the greatness
of her accomplishment.
Chapter 31
243
244
They come home. Maya goes to her room. An argument immediately breaks out where
Dolores is claiming that Bailey’s children are coming between them.
In the argument, Bailey shares that Maya had referred to Dolores as pretentious. He then storms
out.
244-245
Maya feels bad for Dolores because she has been sitting and waiting patiently. She
apologizes and Dolores tells her not to eaves drop on other people’s conversations.
245-246
Dolores tells Maya to go back to her whore mother. They fight. Maya has a tiny little
sneaking suspicion that this might be true.
246
Maya flees, cut, to the car. Daddy Bailey comes from the neighbors that he is visiting to
the rescue.
247-248
When dad returns to the car, he sees that Maya has been cut. He starts the car and they
drive to get help. Maya believe, melodramatically, that she is going to die; she starts to
prepare her will.
248-250
Daddy takes her to the house of some friends. They patch her up and he stays there.
Maya is convinced that the reason that they did not go to the hospital is because Daddy
Bailey’s reputation would be hurt as a result of it. She is staying at the house of the friends.
Eventually she feels bad. She thinks (almost jokingly) about suicide but decides that the
best decision is to set out on her own (She is 15). Her leaving would be a relief to her
father. She feels that she cannot go home to her mother with the cut.
Chapter 32
251
Maya wanders to the carnival, the library and changes her bandage in the bathroom.
*** Maya comes upon a junkyard of old cars. Makes the decision to pick one and sleep in it for the
night with the thought that a better solution would appear the next day.
252
As Maya waits to fall asleep, a group of kids from different races stands outside the car and looks
at her curiously.
252-253
i.
ii.
the group accepts that Maya has no place to go. They say she can stay but must follow the
rules:
No two people of the same sex stay together (if they have to double up in a car due to the
rain.).
No stealing (to avoid bringing the cops to the under-aged foster homable children)
iii.
iv.
Everyone worked.
Bootsie held all the money and it was used communally.
253
Maya lived in the junkyard a month. She learned how to dance, cuss and drive.
***
Maya won second place in a dance contest with a Mexican boy; she won ten dollars for the
commune.
254
Maya learned a lot about tolerance and acceptance in that community.
254-255
Mom sends an airline ticket to the airport (at Maya’s request). The community does not
make a big deal about Maya leaving. She makes it home leaner than usual. Her mom is
wonderful Dolores is a fool.
Chapter 33
256
Maya is just a bit more cynical, perhaps, after her summer. She has given up some youth for
knowledge.
***
She discovers that Bailey has grown up too; he is hanging out with a gang, wearing zoot suits and is
disinterested in her summer.
256-257
One area where Maya and Bailey have grown together is in dancing. They both can do it
now after years of practice with their mother. They go to the big auditoriums to hear the
big bands of the 1940s. They gain a reputation as “Those Dancing Fools.”
257$$$
“Mother and Bailey were entangled in the Oedipal skein.” They need to be together but
apart as well. On a flimsy excuse, mother asks Bailey to leave and he decides to leave. He
is sixteen.
257
To try to compete with his mother’s seedy friends, he wears a ring, a suit and acquires a
withered white prostitute.
258
Mother tries to stop this pattern in Bailey’s life. His resolve is strengthened. They fight.
Bailey and mother fight viscously around Maya. She feels like neutral Switzerland with
shells dropping all around her.
259
They wait for Bailey to come in at night to the song, “Tomorrow night, will You
Remember What You Said Tonight?”
$$$
What is the significance of that title with what happens below?
***
Bailey comes in late—1:00. The screaming from mother begins. Bailey announces that he is
leaving.
260
Mother follows him to his room, going ballistic.
260-261
He is pissed off, packing. Maya’s world is crumbling; her big brother is leaving. He offers
for her to come. He says that he will not miss his mother.
261
***
He storms out. Mother is pissed off.
The next morning, mother seems alright making breakfast. No one mentions Bailey.
262
***
Maya goes and finds Bailey at a boarding house. She wants to offer him her support.
Bailey invites her in. She wants him to be mad but he is not. He informs Maya, to her surprise
that he and mother talked this morning and worked out everything. He is a man and needs to be
on his own.
263
Bailey tells Maya that mother has a friend who got him on the railroad working on the
dining car. From there he will be able to branch out. Maya knows that he wants to do this
so she supports him and lets him go.
Chapter 34
264
***
Maya feels like she needs change in her life.
Maya makes the decision to go to work and she knows that her mother will support her in this.
264-265
She decides that she wants to be a street car conductor (they have started accepting women
for this by this time.).
265
When told by her mother that “they don’t take coloreds” for that position, Maya is first
disappointed, then mad, then determined. Her mother tells her to go ahead and give it a
try.
266
Maya goes to a shabby looking office to apply and the secretary lies to her saying the
personnel manager, Mr. Cooper is not in and probably will not be in tomorrow either.
267
Maya is pissed off. She realizes that the interaction is not personal so much as it is racism
that has bred over the years by stupid whites.
268
The next weeks become an exercise in determination where Maya is looking for support
from Blcak organizations. San Fran becomes a foreign place to her.
269
Mother tells her that she well get out of the world what she puts into it.
***
One day she shows up at the office again and out of nowhere, she seems to get the job. She has to
lie well as they ask her to fill out lots of forms and applications.
***
After many tests, Maya becomes the “first Negro on the San Francisco streetcars.”
270
Maya works on the streetcar blissfully even through the worst, maliciously chosen shifts.
Her mother supports her bigtime.
270-271
Maya goes back to school. She realizes, however, that she has grown a lot and away from
her friends. She feels more worldly and like they are very much stuck in a high school
world.
271
Maya starts cutting class. Mother tells her that she doesn’t have to go if her work is up to
standard. Just be honest so that she (mother) does not have to lie to a white woman.
School becomes extremely tedious for Maya.
***
“To be left alone on the tightrope of youthful unknowing is to experience the excrutiating
beauty of full freedom and the threat of eternal indecision. Few, if any, survive their teens.
Most surrender to the vague but murderous pressure of adult conformity. It becomes
easier to die and avoid conflicts than to maintain a constant battle with the superior forces
of maturity.”
372
“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.”
Chapter 35
273
Maya begins exploring the world of Lesbianism and “perverts” by reading The Well of
Loneliness.
***
She enjoys the gay men she knows because the seem so genuine.
274
After her forth reading, Maya begins to think that being a lesbian is the same thing as being a
hermaphrodite. The idea of two organs makes the prospect of going to the bathroom or making
love confusing.
274
Maya is uncomfortable with how not feminine her body sounds and looks. She starts to read
about lesbians and discovers that hermaphrodites are different because they are “born that way.”
***
She seems to be worried about this “unusual growth.” Clearly, she is worried that her clitoris is a
penis.
275
She decides to ask her mother one night. She is kind of worried that her mother will disown her if
she discovers that in fact she is a lesbian. Her mother is very cool, nonchalant and protective
about the possible question.
276
It is very hard for Maya to ask her mother about this stuff. Her mother keeps thinking that she
might have a venereal disease. Maya tells her no, indignantly. She decides that if her mother
laughs, she will leave.
277
Maya tells her mother that something is growing on her vagina. Her mother tells her to get her a
beer and the dictionary. They look up “vulva.” Maya realizes that the growth of her vulva is
normal. She is relieved and exclaims, “I thought that maybe I was turning into a lesbian.”
278
Maya’s mother laughs when she hears the reasons why Maya thought that she was turning into a
lesbian.
***
Maya’s mother tells her not to worry and to go back to bed. After the conversation, Maya is still
concerned about the possibility that she is a lesbian.
279
When a friend is sleeping over and changing, Maya realizes that she finds another woman
physically beautiful, but she also realizes that she does not fit the stereotype of a lesbian.
280
Maya decides that it would be a good idea to find a boyfriend to clarify her sexuality. The problem
is that the boys simply do not offer many good choices.
281
Maya finds a good-looking neighborhood boy to have sex with. She surprises him and corners
him.
***
He offers surprise that she is going to give him something:
“Even as the scene was being enacted I realized the imbalance in his values. He thought I
was giving him something, and the fact of the matter was that it was my intention to take
something from him. His good looks and popularity had made him so inordinately
conceited that they blinded him to that possibility.”
282-283
Maya describes an extremely “blah” first sexual experience. Moreover, she still questions
her normalcy at the end of it all. And, to boot, she finds herself pregnant three weeks later.
Chapter 36
284
Maya is unbelievable crushed under the weight (at sixteen) of the burden that she is pregnant.
285
She writes to Bailey. He tells her not to tell mom because he knows that she will freak. He also
tells her not to drop out of school because she will find it nearly impossible to go back. So, she
keeps the truth from her mom, and her mom does not seem to notice.
286
Maya rediscovers school and buries herself under facts. Maya feels her body changing and
experiences morning sickness. Bailey comes back from South America (the merchant marine) and
mother goes off to Alaska for about three months (in Maya’s sixth month of pregnancy) to set up a
club.)
287
Maya graduates and tells Daddy Clidell that night that she is going to deliver a baby in three
weeks. Mother and daddy can’t believe that she put it past them. Mother doesn’t see the
usefulness in bringing the boy into it. He doesn’t want to marry her (he stopped talking to her
after the forth month of pregnancy). She doesn’t want to marry him.
288
After three weeks of todo, Maya had an easy labor. She was petrified to touch her own
“possession” however because of her awkwardness and unfamiliarity with her new situation.
288-289
Maya’s mother brings the baby to her bed and says that the baby is going to sleep with her.
Maya begs no, saying that she is going to crush the baby. Her mother insists. She tries to
stay awake but falls asleep. Maya’s mother wakes her up and shows her that she has fallen
asleep perfectly and protectingly around the baby.
289
Maya’s mother whispers to her, “See, you don’t have to think about doing the right thing.
If you’re for the right thing, the you do it without thinking.”