Over the past few weeks, I have been reading a novel called I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, written by Maya Angelou. It is a creative non-fiction novel in which the author describes her life as a child and a teenager living in America during the 1930s and 1940s. There are several Ways of Knowing that the writer explores throughout this novel.
A major WOK in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is emotion. This WOK can be found in many different sections in the book. There is one incident that occurred in the book that really captivated me, where Maya (who was only 8 years old at the time) gets raped by a man. Afterwards, she refrains herself from speaking to anybody due to the fact that she feels embarrassed and ashamed of herself. This generates a lot of emotion for both the readers and the characters in the book, as it provokes a wide range of feelings. The whole book also has a very emotional arc, proven by the fact that at the start Maya believes herself to be inferior to everyone else, but towards the end, she has a growing sense of confidence.
Language is another WOK that played a large role in the novel. After Maya stops herself from speaking due to the traumatising event, a character named Mrs Bertha Flowers decides to prod Maya out of her silence by giving her a large amount of books. She tells Maya to read aloud, and because of Maya’s growing love towards language and literature, she gradually found her voice back. Language is a very important WOK presented in this novel because the readers are able to understand the positive empowerment language has on people.
Sense perception is also a WOK that is explored in the book. In Chapter 11, Maya was sleeping in bed when she felt something strange on her left leg. By referring to the text, when she writes “It was too soft to be a hand, and it wasn’t the touch of clothes” and “I turned my head a little to the left to see if Mr Freeman was awake and gone, but his eyes were open and both hands were above the cover”, it is evident that she used sense perception, in this case, touch and sight, to finally determine that it was Mr Freeman’s ‘thing’ on her leg. Afterwards, in Chapter 12, when Maya sees that Mr Freeman’s “pants were open and his ‘thing’ was standing out of his britches by itself”, she is using sense perception again and intuition as well, in fact, to realise that he was getting ready to do something awful to her.
Clearly, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings explores many different Ways of Knowing, in different situations and involving different characters.