I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

THIS spellbinding autobiography is about the first 16 years of Maya Angelou s difficult life. In the first of a series of five books, Angelou entrances her readers with the hardships of her youth. Her parents divorced when she was three years old and Maya

THIS spellbinding autobiography is about the first 16 years of Maya Angelou's difficult life.

In the first of a series of five books, Angelou entrances her readers with the hardships of her youth.

Her parents divorced when she was three years old and Maya and her older brother were sent to live with their grandmother in a small Arkansas town where she experienced the horrors of racism and religious hypocrisy.

When she was eight, she went to live with her mother in St Louis and was raped by her mother's lover.

In her teenage years she ran away, lived on the streets and slept in abandoned cars. She fell pregnant at 16 but finished high school, positive about her future as a mother.

This is a must-read and will leave you desperate to find out what happens next in Gather Together in My Name.

Thanks to Waterstones, Stevenage. 4/5