Risky Reads: ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ by Maya Angelou : NPR
And yet, in the lusciousness of her language, my 13-year-old self found freedom and kindness and a way forward, a way to hold my head up. In the row, at one point, my mother said: “She once worked as a prostitute! And this is the role model you choose?!” I nodded, and grasped Maya to my heart — her beauteous, succulent words, her cadences singing out to me, a freed bird, winging around my cage.
In reading Maya Angelou, I became more grown-up than the grown-ups. I realized that I understood something that they had not: that pain can be visited on you at any time, child or adult, and it was within you that the answers to that pain were.
My mother loves Maya Angelou now. I didn’t win the argument back then, but I feel Maya won it for me in the long run, by living her life so beautifully. And even back then, while I may have lost the row, my mother didn’t take the book away. She and my dad were liberal, and approved of us reading anything. The end of the argument went something like, “I wish you’d read something proper” — Mum meant Jane Austen, I guess.
I say the same thing to my kids now, and when I say it, I’m pointing at Maya Angelou.
More: Risky Reads: ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,’ by Maya Angelou : NPR