Maya Angelou: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

 Word Count: 807

From “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou

“One crossed her eyes, stuck her thumbs into both sides of her mouth and said,“Look here Annie”. Grandmother hummed on and the apron strings trembled. I wanted to throw a handful of black pepper into their faces, to throw lye on them, to scream that they were dirty, scummy peckerwoods, but i knew I was as clearly imprisoned behind the scene as the actors outside were confined to their roles” (44)

“Why couldn't she have come inside the sweet, cool store when we saw them breasting the hill? What did she prove?” (45)

“Something had happened out there, which I couldn’t completely understand, but I could see that she was happy […] Whatever the contest had been out front, I knew Momma had won” (45)

In the beginning of this story, we get to see the character of Momma, the narrator's grandmother. She is a very strict woman who expects respect and obedience. This is why once the white girls come up to antagonize her, the narrator finds her reaction to be odd. 

When the narrator sees these girls coming, she wants to beg her grandmother to go inside with her but she knows it would be worthless. These girls purposefully stand in front of Momma and begin to mock and antagonize her. Even though the narrator does not understand at that moment, we can understand that the girls were pushing Momma to do something, to react. The girls felt a sense of power over and a lack of respect for Momma.

This interaction, while it seems like nothing but girls harassing an indifferent woman, informs readers on the way black people began to take their power back in social situations during the segregation era. Momma is obviously a strong woman and would not back down unless there was cause to. She recognizes that she would not be able to ‘disrespect’, talk back, or discipline these girls no matter how much she wants to because that is their goal. If she did what they wanted, the girls would probably run back and tell their parents, probably with some exaggeration, and Momma would get into serious trouble. It would be absolutely worthless, in fact harmful, to react in any abnormal way. Momma gained some power back from them by not allowing their words or actions to affect her, especially to the point where she reacted. Those girls failed in what they tried to accomplish and that is why Momma won that interaction. 

But did she have to stay outside? She didn't have to, but she felt it was necessary in order to take the power that they were trying to steal. When the narrator sees the girls coming she wants to tell her grandmother to hide, which shows that this is not the first time this has happened. Likely, these girls would keep coming back until Momma broke, or someone else, like the narrator, did. A reaction, outside of the normal and polite, such as an expression of anger, or if her body language expressed frustration, would encourage these girls to continue, because their negative perception of black people would be reinforced and they would believe that they could break her and get her to truly do something that would get her in trouble. That is why Momma adopts both a relaxed and composed posture before they arrive. “She did an excellent job of sagging from her waist down but from the waist up she seemed to be pulling for the top of the oak tree across the road” (43). Even if Momma doesn't truly feel at ease or calm, she acts like it. This contest is a contest of strength and acting, and even the narrator recognizes it. Momma stayed in the yard purposefully to get these girls to realize that she, and other black people, were not weak or dumb or easy to trick or antagonize, but rather that she in this situation, had power over them rather than the other way around, regardless of the actual words exchanged.

This interaction demonstrates the big power struggle of the segregation era, because white people, even white children, recognized the key element of how to stay on top of history which was to gain the power back that they were slowly losing. Any sort of serious reaction from Momma would not only be bad for her but for the black community at large, because part of the strategy of these white people was to hurt community members in order to discourage the community at large, and once they stopped fighting back, they would have the power again. Momma illustrates that this battle will not be easily won because she is willing and she knows how to fight it too, that is what she proves.

Citation

Rose, Phyllis. The Norton Book of Women's Lives. W.W. Norton, 1995.