Review: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've been slogging through books I found difficult and alien to me this years and returning to this one after so much time had passed was like a homecoming.

I know the book deals in harrowing subjects, in terribles hardships, but the way she writes welcomed me back like a warm blanket.I breezed through the book when I've plodded through others, because in spite of everything, I found it comfortable and comforting. I knew her voice, and her fears and joys seemed infinitely familiar. I don't mean to imply that I can ever understand or sympathize with plights I've never known: rape and racism. What I think... is that she writes like a woman, in the best sense of the word.

I read Maya Angelou and I am reminded of what Virginia Woolf said about women having to find their "sentence", their way of writing, just as men had. She reminded me of "To Kill A Mocking Bird" not because of the similar subject matter of oppression, or even the time periods, but because their "sentence" was so similar. They seemed to know how to write about being young girls in the same intimate and conspiratorial manner. This is a book I can see myself returning to, re-reading the way I re-read Mocking Bird, because of how lovely its sentence is.

This is a book I feel I can learn from, the way Woolf said women should learn from other women.

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Review: Farmer Boy

Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I read somewhere that one of the most noticeable differences between Mrs. Wilder’s account of her own childhood and that of her husband was the economic prosperity, especially in regards to the plentiful variety of food available to little Almanzo. I also noticed the radically different AMOUNTS of money the Wilder and Ingalls family were dealing with. Ten dollars is a lot for young Laura but Almanzo keeps hearing his family talk about dollars in the hundreds.

However what I found most surprising was Almanzo’s liberal attitude towards school. It is startlingly clear that for Laura, school was a way out of poverty, while Almanzo found it constraining. I thought it surprising because I think we can still see an echo of that attitude going on today. Women have become a majority of college attendees and graduates, mostly because the professions not requiring a college degree that pay well remain deeply male-coded professions.

Considering I had skipped straight from Little in the Big Woods to The Long Winter, it was surprising to see a young Almanzo and a long Eliza Jane. I still love the writing and how she can make the everyday into great drama. I did miss the familiar characters though, I had grown quite fond of the Ingalls.

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