I Know Why Cage Bird Sings (218-289)

Summary
Big Bailey invites Maya to spend the summer with him and his girlfriend, and her name is Dorlores. When them to finally met they was really shocked. Big Bailey wants to get married, but everything it come close to the wedding he postpones it. The thing i find shocking is that he makes frequent trips to Mexico and he supposedly buys groceries. Then one day he asks Maya to come with him and Dolores gets really jealous that she is staying. She starts to enjoy herself, but later on she gets scared because she can not find her father and she is just waiting in the car. Sooner or later he comes out and he is all drunk and he ends up passing out in the car. Maya trying to take responsibility she drives the car fifty miles back even though she has never drove a car in her life. Big bailey redeems hisself and he is able to drive the rest of the wa. He isn't mad about anything, but Maya is kind of mad because he didn't acknowlegde what she did and they drove home in silence. When they get home an arguement breaks off and Bailey leaves and Dolore is crying. Maya goes to her being nice saying that she didn't mean to come between them, but then Dolores insults her mom and says that she is a "whore". After that Maya slaps her and Dolores stabs her with the scissors and Maya runs in the car and locks herself in there. Bailey drives Maya to his other friends house where she spent the night. The next day he comes and gives her money and said he would come back, but Maya refuse to stay there so she packed her stuff and left. She didn't want to go to Vivian because she knew if she saw the wound it would start trouble between Bailey and her. Leaving that day she spends the night in a car at the junk yard. She ends up staying there with a group of teenagers. Later she enters a dance contest and she won second place. Everything was changing especially bailey. He started wearing flashy clothes and dating white prositutes. Sooner or later Baliey moved out and his mom got him a job in the south pacfic. Maya starts to develop and she doesn't understand what is going on, so she ask her mom and she told her all of that stuff is natural. She didn't understand the word lesbian so she didn't know if she was one so she got a boyfriend. During that process; 3 weeks later she finds out that she is pregnant. Later on she gives birth to her son and she is fascinated, but afraid to touch him. Vivian shows how the baby lays and tells her she doesnt have to worry about doingthe right thing because if her heart is in the right place she will do the right thing. So Maya peacfually returns to sleep next to her son.



Quote
The quote I decided to pick was "Life is going to give you just what you put in it. Put your whole heart in everything you do, and pray, then you can wait (Angelou 269)." This quote was said to Maya by her mother. She mostly tells her things like this every morning. She does that to show Maya that evrything isn't going to be placed in your hand, and you should put effort in the things you do. This quote is important because in life you may think that the things you do in life doesn't count but it does. To make it big and to suceed you need to put love and caring in what you do, even if it is the littlest thing. Once you do that is needed to be done good things would happend and you will sometimes get what you want. But if you put no effort, no love or not caring of what you do, your going to get no where.


Reaction
As I was finishing up the book ii saw many changes in the relation change. Everyone was going up and doing what they wanted to do. To me I call this novel a of coming age. This is said because in this book Maya Angelou shows how the kids grow up and they learn many new things. Maya and Bailey do so much when they was little and half of the things they didn't even understand it especially Maya. Out of both of them Maya had it the worse, but I was shocked of what she was doing with her life. I was mostly shocked when she had a child at the end of the book. The ending of the book was very calm and peaceful. I think it ended like that, so it can show that Maya is starting a new life and readdy to take care of her responsiblity. Overall i loved the book and it was amazing. Even though i think the book should have a few more chapters, it was good.