Is there an audiobook of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?

Yes. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Maya Angelou.

How long is the I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings audiobook?

The I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings audiobook runs 10 hr 11 min.

Our review

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

Name: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
Author: Maya Angelou

Maya Angelou

4.7/ 5 · Outstanding

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou's memoir of growing up Black in the segregated South and beyond, from a childhood in Stamps, Arkansas with her brother and grandmother to St. Louis and San Francisco. It is a book about harm, humor, and the books and words that gave her a way out.

Narrated by Maya Angelou

Audiobook · 10 hr 11 min

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How the narration holds up

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The Review

Our take

Maya is a small girl in Stamps, Arkansas, who wants her parents back and can't have them. Her mother has sent her and her brother Bailey to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother, called Momma, and the town offers contempt where it should offer comfort. The segregation is so complete that Maya is, for a while, unsure white people are real. Angelou's argument, made through incident rather than assertion, is that a child can be wounded by an entire society and still come out with a self worth having, and that language is what gets her there.

The evidence is strongest where she tells it straight. Maya, in unbearable pain, needs a dentist, and Stamps has exactly one white one. Momma once lent him money, interest-free, when his practice was nearly done for, and she hopes that will count for something. It counts for nothing. Maya waits out back while her grandmother goes in, and imagines the confrontation in full. The reality is smaller and sharper: Momma comes out with the bus fare she is owed, and they ride to a Black dentist in Texarkana. A whole system gets measured in one afternoon, and the child narrator never needs to explain it. Elsewhere the book tracks how educated Black children learned to slide between the written word and the street without noticing the effort, which is the argument about language shown at work.

The book moves from Stamps to St. Louis to San Francisco, and it does not flinch at what happens to Maya at eight, when a man many times her age attacks her and she lives with the consequences for years. It also keeps its humor, and that is the surprising part. She tells terrible things with a dry amusement that reads as acceptance, and it is a large part of why the book never turns to pity. In San Francisco she watches a neighborhood change as Japanese American families are taken from it and Black families arrive for work, and she falls hard for Shakespeare, one of the great authors whose ideas help her feel free instead of imprisoned.

Why you should read

Memoirs of childhood in the Jim Crow South
Coming-of-age stories told with dry humor
Readers curious about Maya Angelou's early life
Books where reading and language save the narrator

What to expect

Episodic scenes moving across three places and years
Poetic, precise prose with a child's eye view
A frank account of abuse and racism
Humor running through the hardest material

A fair complaint is that Angelou is selective. She blurs some family details, her mother's most of all, and a few readers feel the book circles its author rather than inviting you in. I'd say the withholding is a choice and a protective one, and the child's eye she keeps throughout makes it hold. This is the first of her autobiographies, and it has the confidence of a writer who already knows what she can do with a sentence.

Reviewed by Ellis · How our reviews are written

Our verdict

4.7/ 5

Outstanding

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Where to read or listen

Is there an audiobook of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings?: Yes. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings has an Audible audiobook edition, narrated by Maya Angelou.
Listen free with Audible
We earn from qualifying Amazon purchases.
How long is the I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings audiobook?: The I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings audiobook runs 10 hr 11 min.

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Common questions

What is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings about?: Maya is a small girl in Stamps, Arkansas, who wants her parents back and can't have them. Her mother has sent her and her brother Bailey to live with their devout, self-sufficient grandmother, called Momma, and the town offers contempt where it should offer comfort. The segregation is so complete…
Is I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings worth reading?: We scored I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 4.7 out of 5. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou's memoir of growing up Black in the segregated South and beyond, from a childhood in Stamps, Arkansas with her brother and grandmother to St. Louis and San Francisco. It is a book about harm, humor, and the books and words that…

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