Maya Angelou begins her autobiography with a humiliating story in which she forgets the lines to a poem she is reciting at an Easter church service, hurries down the aisle to get to the bathroom, is tripped by a child in one of the pews, and wets her pants on her way out of the church.
Throughout this painful scene, young Marguerite describes her fantasy that one day her true self, a beautiful white woman, will be revealed. Then, finally, she will be accepted and adored by the people who have teased and pitied her.
Angelou may have chosen this story to highlight the sense of isolation and awkwardness she felt as a child. Not only did she have a humiliating moment in front of her church community, as many children do, but the whole scene was compounded by her feeling that she did not fit in. She mentions her "well-known forgetfulness" that makes the other children giggle, people's comments about her eyes, that her father "must of been a Chinaman," and the minister's wife with her "face full of sorry" as she whispers the line Marguerite forgot.
Marguerite's internal thoughts during this scene also highlight the role of race in her feeling of not belonging. Marguerite envisions her true self as a beautiful, blond, blue-eyed, white woman. She thinks of her blackness and her awkwardness as temporary things that hide her true self. She wears an unflattering dress made from the dress of a white woman. She had high hopes for the dress, thinking it would make her look beautiful and draw people to her. In reality, the dress is an ugly color and makes her feel self-conscious in front of the church. This tension around the way Marguerite sees herself and the way others perceive her sets the stage for many of the events in Angelou's life as the story progresses.
Maya Angelou begins her book with the scene of Maya in the church for the purpose of establishing the title. As a young child, Maya was the caged bird. A caged bird sings because it feels trapped. Trapped in its environment, trapped in a family that it did not pick, trapped in body that is not liked, trapped into being on display and having people looking at you and have nowhere to hide. Maya is trying to let the reader know this is why she picked the title for the book. It is how she felt since being a young girl. So to manage feeling trapped, she sings, she writes poetry, she lets out the pain and frustration in the only way she knows. To sing.
Angelou begins her autobiography with this painful episode to highlight the difference between her dreams and her reality as a black Southern girl. She dreams that she is white, has blonde hair and blue eyes, and is wearing a glamorous dress that will make everyone gasp in awe. Instead, on Easter morning, she finds herself firmly back in reality, and she realizes that the transformation she imagined has not occurred. Instead, she is still black, and she is wearing an ugly cast-off dress that manages to show her skinny legs greased with Vaseline. She also pees in her underwear while leaving the church, to add to her humiliation.
This episode brings home the nature of what she describes as her "displacement." She is acutely aware of the way society marginalizes people like her, yet her book is full of the ways in which she fights back and asserts her individuality and independence. This scene informs the reader in a very moving way how the narrator feels marginalized even at a young age.
The first scene of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, in which Maya unsuccessfully attempts to recite an Easter poem before the congregation, was chosen to provide a glimpse of the rich joy, pain, and trauma that permeate the book. Angelou's musings reveal key details of her upbringing, including a strong desire to be viewed as beautiful, the widespread poverty of the rural Arkansas setting, and the uncannily sharp recall and insight with which she processes life, even at an early age. The anecdote sharply reveals the devastating impact European beauty standards can have on individuals whose looks do not align; Maya dreams of blond hair and blue eyes, demonstrating both the crushing weight of white supremacy and the absence in Maya's life of nurturing female influences with features similar to her own. Joy is often quickly followed by devastation in the book, and the conclusion of this introductory chapter accurately foreshadows the ongoing clash:
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.
It is an unnecessary insult.
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