A review of “I Know the Caged Bird Sings” in 100 words by Catherine Stover
What makes a memoir great? Honesty, insight, humor, compassion? What about metaphors? Comparing a feeling to something you can see requires a lot of creativity. Look at how Angelo compares “shame” to “paper” in this description of what happened when she forgot the words of her solo on Easter Sunday when she was a child: “The dress I wore was lavender taffeta, and each time I breathed it rustled, and now that I was sucking in air to breathe out shame it sounded like crepe paper on the back of hearses.” The metaphors in this book will knock you over.
Work cited:
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Bantom reissue edition, 1993, p. 3.