When a book is banned or challenged, the reasons why can typically be reduced to a few simple categories: violence, sex, language, “dark” content, LGTBQ+ content, religious objections and racism. And today’s book checks EVERY SINGLE BOX. Seriously, it’s that good.
Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” is the first of a series of autobiographical books with stories from the author’s childhood, from age 3 to the birth of her own child at 17. She describes a series of exceptionally heavy moments, including being abandoned by her parents and sent to live with a grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas, , several horrific acts of racism towards her and her community by the “powitetrash” of Stamps, her father’s return and subsequent second abandonment with her mother at age 8, rape at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend, guilt over the boyfriend’s murder, presumedly an act of revenge by her uncles, causing her to withdraw and essentially become a mute recluse until she meets a wealthy black woman who introduces her to literature, where she finds solace from her trauma. Later, her grandmother would send her to her mother in San Francisco to protect them from the growing racial danger in Stamps (there’s a harrowing moment in the book where her grandmother has to hide Angelou’s disabled Uncle Willie in a vegetable bin to protect him from KKK thugs, where he lay moaning and groaning under a layer of potatoes throughout the entire night). While in high school, she visited her father in Southern California, where she experienced homelessness for a time after a fight with her father’s girlfriend. Towards the end of the book, during her final year in high school, she becomes concerned she might be a lesbian. She eventually winds up initiating sex with a teenage boy, resulting in a pregnancy, which she hides until her 8th month in order to graduate high school. And that is where this first volume leaves off, and there is so much more in between the front and back covers that I couldn’t include here so, please go find a copy of the book for yourself. You will cry, smile, and want to throw things, sometimes all at once. So get it, read it, and mind your aim.
Clearly, the book isn’t meant for very small children, but excerpts are routinely worked into high school curricula across the country. Still, it remains one of the most frequently banned books in this country. As recently as this year (2025!), it was stripped from shelves at the U.S. Naval Academy, along with 380 other titles, at the behest of Pete Hegseth, during his purge of anything remotely connected to diversity, equity and inclusion. Thankfully it was returned after public outcry, but it’s unlikely to be the last time it’ll send Conservative Whites scrambling to clutch their pearls.
The reason this book is so important, at least to me personally, is that it is ultimately a story of survival, of being tested and coming out the other side. And it’s a story of an existence that is unfamiliar to many, and all too familiar for many others. For those who haven’t experienced trauma at that level, it can be a much-needed lesson about privilege and empathy. For those who see themselves in this woman’s story, it’s an affirmation, and validation that their own experiences are real, and are not shameful, but simply human. And every other reader is going to connect to it in a different way. That’s the beauty of Angelou’s memoirs. They aren’t tales or fables, they are a Black woman’s lived experiences. And she doesn’t ask us to judge, or find any particular lessons within the paragraphs. She isn’t holding up cue cards and expecting us to “aww” at this moment, or “boo” at another. The book, and her life story, simply IS.
Now, how do you justify banning something that simply IS?
A rational person will tell you, you can’t simply pretend the past didn’t happen, or that the present isn’t largely determined by what happened previously. You can’t edit a life, removing all of the difficult bits until it is incapable of making anyone uncomfortable, and still call it truth. A life simply IS, warts, farts and all.
The people calling for bans of “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” are proudly irrational. They preserve their inner peace by pretending others’ uncomfortableness doesn’t exist. They seek to cover our children’s eyes and ears, and pretend that the world is good to everyone, and has always been so. They seek to cover the eyes and ears of grown readers, as well, primarily college-age readers who are perhaps taking their first steps outside of the bubbles they were raised in, perhaps discovering the fact that they don’t have to carry on the same opinions and biases that their parents have, and perhaps realizing that the world is so much bigger and more colorful than they ever imagined.
Pretending experiences don’t exist, or trying to cover them in an opaque, black plastic bag of shame, helps no one. It doesn’t feed the knowledge-seekers looking for reasons why. It doesn’t provide solace to the struggling soul who feels isolated and alone. It can’t uplift. It can’t bring awareness and understanding. It can’t broaden minds or create common ground. It can’t make people rage at yesterday’s injustices or provide the fuel to create change for a more just tomorrow. It moves no one, changes nothing, fixes nothing.
If we want less racial tension, we need to have these human moments made accessible. If we want to help people process trauma, we need to show them they aren’t alone, and that there’s a path forward. If we want answers, we must be courageous enough to accept the bad with the good, the healing with the pain. And if we want truth, which we all should, these stories must remain within our reach, free of any stigma or taboo.
Because, in the end, life simply IS. And that is beautiful.
A One-Sided Conversation with an Angry Tardigrade 