A Sense Of Completion

Completed a rereading of Maya Angelou's I Know how the Caged Bird Sings today, ahead of teaching the memoir next term. Read it with much enjoyment at quite a lick to try and get a sense of the architecture of the work. As I've vaguely felt previously, it seems to me to divide into two segments which don't necessarily hang together: the childhood in Stamps, the teenage years in San Francisco. Both are fascinating but the years in Stamps have a mythic power quite lacking in the later chapters. Indeed, I really can't quite get hold of the odd later chapter in which Maya becomes a sort of member of a teenage gang for a month or so. I suppose it was simply something that happened and needed recording, as in any accidentally constructed life.

Was the book written as part of a larger autobiographical project - successfully delivered over the years - or is it meant to stand alone, coherent in itself? Either way, it's good stuff.