Final Paper for Semester on Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou

Opening Scene
The opening scene of Maya Angelou's, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, snatches its reader, draws them into the story, and refuses to let them go until the last exhausting sentence. The scene states the foreshadowing of events and struggles that are bound to come throughout the coming of age of a young black girl. The novel opens with a young lady named Maya reading an Easter poem in front of her church congregation. Maya is wearing an unflattering taffeta secondhand dress wishing for the day she would be considered beautiful. Stumbling on her words, she is unable to fini…