This book is dedicated to
MY SON, GUY JOHNSON,
AND ALL THE STRONG BLACK BIRDS
OF PROMISE
who defy the odds and gods
and sing their songs

I think I'm going to have trouble fully expressing the awe in which I find myself submerged after reading this book. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is an exemplary autobiography. Through wonderfully wrought text, the entire book becomes poetry and transforms and elevates this simple memoir into beauty. Angelou's writing was sensuous, sinewy, and serpentine.

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat.

Aided by the awareness of her rich and textured voice, her writing style is like weaving words of velvet. In these pages, there's a story, a damned good one, and in it you fully come to know the young woman this beacon of our society started as, and you learn her song.

I could never put my finger on her realness. She was so pretty and so quick that even when she had just awakened, her eyes full of sleep and hair tousled, I thought she looked just like the Virgin Mary. But what mother and daughter understand each other, or even have the sympathy for each other's lack of understanding?

Yes, there is strength in these words. Some of these words could rival Atlas's power and hold up the Earth, each word filling up the pools of the oceans and anchoring the lands.

The Black woman in the South who raises sons, grandsons and nephews had her heartstrings tied to a hanging noose.

These powerful words are told with the ebb and flow of a moving river. They take you along, and sweep you through Angelou's early life. But, that's not to say that each sentence is overpowered by the weight of each word. There's a careful and delightful balance. The vignettes she allows you to view are meaningful; some in an epic or thought-provoking way, and some that leave you filled with sympathy (and hopefully empathy), and there are, of course, some filled with humor.

Momma said, "That child would stumble over the pattern in a rug."

Of course I could drive. Idiots and lunatics drove cars, why not the brilliant Marguerite Johnson?

I am from the South, but I am not Black. Nor, will I ever, no matter how many books I read, no matter how many skins I slip into through the power held in books and their lovely characters, be able to truly understand what it is like to grow up and be accused, judged, and sentenced because of the color of my skin. But, for a while, I saw through Marguerite Johnson's eyes, and I thought with her mind, and I felt with her heart, and her beautiful voice whispered in my ears.