I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 1969

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Summary

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Introduction-Chapter 3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-15

Chapters 16-18

Chapters 19-21

Chapters 22-24

Chapters 25-27

Chapters 28-30

Chapters 31-33

Chapters 34-36

Key Figures

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Chapters 31-33Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 31 Summary

After Maya and her father return home, Dolores gets into an argument with Bailey Senior because she thinks he lets his children come between them. Infuriated, Bailey Senior leaves home, and Maya decides that she needs to console Dolores. She feels bad for the woman, who has been “busying herself with housewifely duties” (244) while her father was drinking and dancing in Mexico. Maya tells Dolores that she has no intention to come between her and her father, but this enrages the woman even more. She calls Maya’s mother a whore and the girl slaps her. Maya and Dolores begin to struggle, and as Maya runs outside, she discovers that she has a cut in her side. Dolores, holding a hammer, runs after Maya, and the girl locks herself in the car, waiting for her father to come home.

Hearing the commotion, Bailey Senior soon returns and finds Maya bleeding. Because he doesn’t want to undermine his reputation in the community, he doesn’t take Maya to a hospital and instead drives her to his friends’ house. There, the wife cleans and bandages the wound, and Maya sees that the blood has already begun to clot. She is very disappointed to discover it, because she was preparing for her death. Afterward, Bailey Senior drives Maya to yet another friend’s house, also a trailer, where she spends the night. Her father stops by in the morning and tells her he will be back in the evening, but Maya doesn’t want to face the family that lives there, so she decides to leave. She packs a few tuna sandwiches, takes a supply of Band-aids, and leaves without informing her father about her decision. Realizing that she can’t return to San Francisco, Maya finds herself suddenly homeless.

Chapter 32 Summary

Maya spends the day wondering the streets and visiting the local library. Afterward, she stumbles into a junkyard full of old cars and decides to spend the night in one of them. She awakens to see a group of teenagers looking at her and wanting to know who she is. Maya learns that they are all homeless and live in the junkyard as a community, governed by strict rules. All members of the community work, collecting bottles or mowing lawns, and then Bootsie, a tall boy who is their unofficial leader, collects the money for communal use.

As Maya joins the community, she gets to know her peers from different backgrounds, “a white girl from Missouri, a Mexican girl from Los Angeles and a Black girl from Oklahoma” (254). Living and working alongside them, Maya develops a sense of tolerance that would later set the tone for her whole life.

After a month of living in the junkyard, Maya decides to telephone her mother and ask her for a return ticket to San Francisco. Upon returning home, Maya appears skinnier than usual, and her mother cooks a special dinner for her.

Chapter 33 Summary

When Maya returns to San Francisco, she feels more grown-up, and finds it hard to reconnect with her brother. The siblings have grown apart, but it’s hard for Maya to lose Bailey as her best friend. The only thing that they still share is the love for dancing, and the siblings often go to the big band dances together.

While Maya becomes less concerned with her mother, Bailey, on the contrary, grows even more attached to her, and “neither could do without or do with the other” (257). Bailey strives to become more like the men who surround Vivian, so he begins a relationship with a white prostitute and starts wearing a diamond ring on his pinky finger. Vivian, however, is outraged by her son’s behavior and the two fight consistently, while Maya is “forgotten on the sidelines” (258).

One night, after Bailey once again violates his curfew, Vivian orders him to move out of the house. He leaves in the middle of the night, and the next day Maya goes to see him at the boarding house where the prostitute lives. Bailey doesn’t want to return home and assures Maya that it’s time for him to “cut the apron strings and face life on his own” (262). Although he is only sixteen, he insists that he’s a man now, and therefore “must push off from the wharf of safety” (262). Bailey admits to Maya that their mother had already visited him that morning and promised to make arrangements, so he can get a job on the railroad. Although Maya is upset, she realizes that there’s nothing she can do that will bring her brother back to reality.

Chapters 31-33 Analysis

This part of the memoir highlights Maya’s family members, and her changing relationships with them. After their trip to Mexico, Maya begins to see her father differently. While before he was a mysterious, awe-inspiring presence, mainly because of his good looks and manners, now, in her eyes, he is a lonesome man, desperate for the feeling of acceptance and admiration. Even though Bailey Senior works in the kitchen of a naval hospital, both he and Dolores tell everyone that he is “a medical dietician for the United States Navy” (228), which testifies to their strong sense of pride. Moreover, Bailey Senior treasures his reputation so much that even when he sees that Maya is bleeding, he doesn’t take her to the hospital, fearing that the news about a violent brawl between his girlfriend and his daughter might spread around the neighborhood.

Bailey Senior doesn’t attempt to resolve the conflict between Maya and Dolores, nor does he try to understand Dolores’ feelings. Although Maya is mad at her, she feels bad for the woman because she sees her devotion to her father, who is unfaithful to her and unresponsive to her needs. Nevertheless, Maya cannot bring herself to like Dolores, who is much different from other female figures in Maya’s life. While both Momma Henderson and Vivian are strong, self-sufficient women, Dolores seems to pin all her hopes on Bailey Senior and the prospect of their marriage. This makes her blind to his lies and insensitive to Maya, and eventually, her growing dissatisfaction with her partner sublimates into violence towards his daughter.

Maya’s reaction to Dolores’ attack shows that she has become quite melodramatic as a teenager. Although Maya has always had a vivid imagination, in her adolescent years, her tendency towards exaggeration became even more apparent. After seeing that she has been cut, Maya silently prepares for her death and is comically disappointed to find out that her wound is not life-threatening. Despite her expectations, her father doesn’t dramatize the situation and arranges for her to get help without paying too much attention to her emotional needs.

After Maya finds herself alone and without a roof over her head, she doesn’t call her mother but instead tries to find shelter on her own. As someone who has felt out of place almost all her life, Maya is amazed how quickly and effortlessly she becomes a part of the community of teenagers that live in a junkyard and their “unquestioning acceptance” (254) towards her helps her overcome her insecurities. Thus, the summer Maya spends in southern California becomes transformative because as she finds herself in a completely new and unknown surrounding and in the company of peers from different social and racial groups, Maya is exposed to diversity she hasn’t experienced before. This profoundly alters her personality, but as she returns home, it becomes evident that the changes in her character alienate Maya from her brother, and the siblings grow apart.