I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

The memoir opens with a young Maya reciting a poem during the Easter service at the Colored Methodist Episcopal Church. She can't remember more than the first few lines, and instead of conjuring up the rest of the poem, she thinks of the dress she is wearing. As her grandmother was sewing it for her, Maya had hoped that it would transform her and make her look like “one of the sweet little white girls who were everybody’s dream of what was right with the world” (2). But when Easter morning came, Maya realized that the dress was merely “a plain ugly cut-down from a white woman's once-was-purple throwaway” (2). Wearing it, Maya feels deeply self-conscious and has an impression that everyone's gaze is fixed on her skinny legs. Nevertheless, she believes that one day she will wake up from this “Black ugly dream” (2) and appear as her true self, beautiful and blond. Then Maya thinks that this sudden transformation will make everyone understand why she avoided acquiring a Southern accent and using the common slang. In Maya’s eyes, she was “really white” (2), and it was her cruel fairy stepmother who turned her into a big Black girl.