Maya Angelou writes on her experience living in Southern rural then in Los Angeles and San Francisco, the book is a heartwarming yet tragic story of her life from birth to young adulthood. She grew in unstable home environment, moving between her grandmother, father, and mother with her brother Bailey. She was sexually molested by her mother's boyfriend at the age of eight that made her shut off from the world and spoke only to Bailey for years, until her teacher helped her come out of the silence after which she moved to California. She says, "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" (Angelou pg 1-228).
Angelou is an aesthetically satisfying autobiographer, presents vivid and realistic characters, and brings out the attitudes of the Southern White towards the blacks; she has good memories of the events. She begins with her early memories but later the events are not in a chronological manner in order to bring unity to her themes. Angelou writes like a song and likes truth, and demonstrates wisdom, rue, and humor in her storytelling. Angelou did not change facts about her life, but fictionalized them in order to increase the impact of her massage. She introduced techniques of characterization, theme development, and dialogue and introduces the Maya character to bring out aspects of her story from the perspective of a child. Fiction stories tap into emotions and have deep impact on people; the stories create empathy for their characters and readers identify with their struggles and frustrations.
The book is powerful and captivating, with richly realized and complex characters; Angelou brings out racial prejudice in America in 1930 and 1940s and the book help understand the plight of African Americans. She says, "My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another black man hanging on a tree.
