I know why the caged bird sings
...r a white man. The white sheriff rides up to the store one night, and tells them to keep Willie out of sight because some black guy messed with a white woman earlier. The white folk were probably going to take out their anger on the black part of town. They decided the best place to hide Willie was underneath a lot of vegetables in a lil’ wagon thing. Maya doesn’t really like the fact that her grandmother is so respectful to the white people. The little white girls are so disrespectful to her, that they do a hand stand to prove that they’re not wearing any underwear. The arrival of the Depression has made things around Stamps even worse. The black people didn’t have much money to begin with, and the depression is doing nothing but hurting their money situations. The money thing makes Christmas a difficult time. Bailey and Maya both receive presents from their parents. It was weird for the kids because they hadn’t seen or heard from their parents since they were sent away. And the fact that all of a sudden they’re receiving gifts from the people that sent them away has made them both pretty sad. I feel bad for them in a way; I wouldn’t want to get a present from someone that didn’t want me living with them, especially if it were my parents. They’re dad shows up in Stamps in the summer. It must have felt weird, seeing their dad after so long. I don’t think I’d want to talk to someone that put me out to live with my grandmother. Their dad decides that he wants them to go with him. They are happy that they’re wanted by their father, but soon they change their mind. The father sounded like a good guy at first, until he did what he did. He left the kids with the impression that they were going to live with him, but all he does is go to St. Louis. The drops the kids off with their mom and takes off again. Once again they’ve been ditched. One night at the store everyone is sitting around listening to the Joe Louis fight. He’s boxing a white man, and when he wins the whole place thinks that this proves that the black race is better than the others. To me this kind of shows that they’re racist. They thi...