This is the first volume of Maya Angelou´s famous autobiography where she portrays the society from a young black girl perspective during the 1930s. As she grows up she gets more and more in contact with racism, and as time go she realizes how restrained black people really are. She often fantasies how life would be if she had blond beautiful hair and light perfect skin, instead of being trapped in a fat, black body. All her thoughts make her very insecure and she doesn’t feel equal to other black children. While Maya tries to both confronts the segregation and pressure from the outside, she feels abandoned and disappointed of her parents who send her and her brother away to live with their grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas in the American South. The only real friend she has is her older brother Bailey. They both spend a lot of time in their grandmother’s store, the centre of the Negro community of the town. The store becomes Mayas favourite place during her childhood and she describes it full of magic and mysteries. The life in the south goes on, until one day when suddenly their father arrives in Stamps to take back her and Bailey to live with their mother Vivian in St. Louis, Missouri. At the reunion with their mom they realize that in her wild and chaotic life there is no place for two children. Vivian’s boyfriend, called Mr Freeman sexually molests and rapes Maya. Maya endures the guilt and shame of having been sexually abused and after the case has been brought up in the court someone brutally murders Mr. Freeman. This gets too much for Maya and the burden of thinking that she’s responsible for Mr. Freeman’s death she decides to stop speaking to everyone, except to Bailey. When her mother understands that the silence isn’t just a way to overcome the rape she gets very frustrated and the solution Maya and Bailey returns to Stamps to live with their grandmother once again. But her grandmother helps her through introducing Maya to Bertha Flowers, who encourage her to read literature and poetry out load and soon Maya is regaining her voice. During her time in Stamps she gets in contact with racism several times. She takes a job for a white woman but soon realizes that she restrains her by calling her Mary, and when she needs a dentist the only answer she gets is that he would rather stick his hand in a dog’s mouth than hers. Their grandmother fears that it can be dangerous for them to keep living with her and sends them back to their mum in California. Finally things seams to get better and when Vivian marries Mr Clidell he takes his responsibility as a father figure. Together they move to San Francisco and Maya feels home for the very first time. But while she’s visiting her real father she gets in a fight with his new girlfriend and runs away. She lives over a month on the street with some other homeless teenagers. Back to San Francisco she’s strong...
