I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 1

“When you learn, teach,” she said frequently. “When you get, give.”

Answer 1

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 2

“We are more alike than we are unalike!”

Answer 2

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 3

If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.

Answer 3

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 4

my grandmother would get out of bed at four o’clock (she never used an alarm clock) and creak down to her knees and chant in a sleep-filled voice, “Our Father, thank you for letting me see this New Day. Thank you that you didn’t allow the bed I lay on last night to be my cooling board, nor my blanket my winding sheet. Guide my feet this day along the straight and narrow, and help me to put a bridle on my tongue. Bless this house, and everybody in it. Thank you, in the name of your Son, Jesus Christ, Amen.”

Answer 4

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 5

Like most children, I thought if I could face the worst danger voluntarily, and triumph, I would forever have power over it.

Answer 5

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 6

He was also able to find more hours in the day than I thought

Answer 6

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 7

In Stamps the segregation was so complete that most Black children didn’t really absolutely know what whites looked like. Other than that they were different, to be dreaded, and in that dread was included the hostility of the powerless against the powerful, the poor against the rich, the worker against the worked for and the ragged against the well dressed.

Answer 7

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 8

I remember never believing that whites were really real.

Answer 8

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 9

not only was cleanliness next to Godliness, dirtiness was the inventor of misery.

Answer 9

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 10

Momma told us that the less you say to whitefolks (or even powhitetrash) the better,

Answer 10

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 11

Deuteronomy was my favorite book in the Bible. The laws were so absolute, so clearly set down, that I knew if a person truly wanted to avoid hell and brimstone, and being roasted forever in the devil’s fire, all she had to do was memorize Deuteronomy and follow its teaching, word for word. I also liked the way the word rolled off the tongue.

Answer 11

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 12

Turning off or tuning out people was my highly developed art.

Answer 12

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 13

when a person is beating you you should scream as loud as possible; maybe the whipper will become embarrassed or else some sympathetic soul might come to your rescue.

Answer 13

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 14

Laughter so easily turns to hysteria for imaginative children.

Answer 14

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 15

People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream.

Answer 15

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 16

I think that everyone thought that the Depression, like everything else, was for the whitefolks, so it had nothing to do with them.

Answer 16

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 17

the Depression, at least, did not discriminate.

Answer 17

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 18

To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power. Or the climbing, falling colors of a rainbow.

Answer 18

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 19

We learned the Time Step at Louie’s. It is from this basic step that most American Black dances are born.

Answer 19

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 20

I rather you have a good mind than a cute behind.”

Answer 20

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 21

They showed me a contentment based on the belief that nothing more was coming to them, although a great deal more was due.

Answer 21

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 22

“Now Ju, be careful you don’t slip up on a not true.” (Nice people didn’t say “lie.”)

Answer 22

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 23

It followed that Mrs. Flowers would have ice on an ordinary day, when most families in our town bought ice late on Saturdays only a few times during the summer to be used in the wooden ice-cream freezers.

Answer 23

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 24

I was liked, and what a difference it made.

Answer 24

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 25

Childhood’s logic never asks to be proved (all conclusions are absolute).

Answer 25

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 26

I found that my violation lay in using the phrase “by the way.” Momma explained that “Jesus was the Way, the Truth and the Light,” and anyone who says “by the way” is really saying, “by Jesus,” or “by God,” and the Lord’s name would not be taken in vain in her house.

Answer 26

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 27

Every person I knew had a hellish horror of being “called out of his name.” It was a dangerous practice to call a Negro anything that could be loosely construed as insulting because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, jigs, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks.

Answer 27

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 28

it was a tossup over whether I would laugh (imagine being named Hallelujah) or cry (imagine letting some white woman rename you for her convenience).

Answer 28

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 29

Southern Blacks until the present generation could be counted among America’s arch conservatives.

Answer 29

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 30

Bailey was so far away he was beyond fear.

Answer 30

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 31

interesting that the meanest life, the poorest existence, is attributed to God’s will, but as human beings become more affluent, as their living standard and style begin to ascend the material scale, God descends the scale of responsibility at a commensurate speed.

Answer 31

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 32

other churches wondered if the Holy Rollers were going to heaven after all their shouting. The suggestion was that they were having their heaven right here on earth.

Answer 32

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 33

They basked in the righteousness of the poor and the exclusiveness of the downtrodden. Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly—mostly-let them have their whiteness. It was better to be meek and lowly, spat upon and abused for this little time than to spend eternity frying in the fires of hell. No one would have admitted that the Christian and charitable people were happy to think of their oppressors’ turning forever on the Devil’s spit over the flames of fire and brimstone.

Answer 33

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 34

It’s another to the body, and it looks like Louis is going down.” My race groaned. It was our people falling. It was another lynching, yet another Black man hanging on a tree. One more woman ambushed and raped. A Black boy whipped and maimed. It was hounds on the trail of a man running through slimy swamps. It was a white woman slapping her maid for being forgetful.

Answer 34

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 35

It wouldn’t do for a Black man and his family to be caught on a lonely country road on a night when Joe Louis had proved that we were the strongest people in the world.

Answer 35

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 36

I never talked about St. Louis to her, and had generally come to believe that the nightmare with its attendant guilt and fear hadn’t really happened to me. It happened to a nasty little girl, years and years before, who had no chain on me at all.

Answer 36

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 37

As children do, I thought that since she was very old she had only one thing to do, and that was to die.

Answer 37

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 38

Naturally, I believed in hants and ghosts and “thangs.” Having been raised by a super-religious Southern Negro grandmother, it would have been abnormal had I not been superstitious.

Answer 38

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 39

But to be able to operate at a top level with both adults and children was admirable.

Answer 39

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 40

Habits change or solidify under pressure,

Answer 40

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 41

It was awful to be Negro and have no control over my life. It was brutal to be young and already trained to sit quietly and listen to charges brought against my color with no chance of defense. We should all be dead. I thought I should like to see us all dead, one on top of the other. A pyramid of flesh with the whitefolks on the bottom,

Answer 41

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 42

The ugliness they left was palpable. An uninvited guest who wouldn’t leave.

Answer 42

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 43

It was the poem written by James Weldon Johnson. It was the music composed by J. Rosamond Johnson. It was the Negro national anthem. Out of habit we were singing it.

Answer 43

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 44

We were on top again. As always, again. We survived. The depths had been icy and dark, but now a bright sun spoke to our souls. I was no longer simply a member of the proud graduating class of 1940; I was a proud member of the wonderful, beautiful Negro race.

Answer 44

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 45

It seemed terribly unfair to have a toothache and a headache and have to bear at the same time the heavy burden of Blackness.

Answer 45

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 46

my policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s.”

Answer 46

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 47

Knowing Momma, I knew that I never knew Momma. Her African-bush secretiveness and suspiciousness had been compounded by slavery and confirmed by centuries of promises made and promises broken. We have a saying among Black Americans which describes Momma’s caution. “If you ask a Negro where he’s been, he’ll tell you where he’s going.”

Answer 47

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 48

The partner lived, though shot twice, and although the partnership was dissolved they retained admiration for each other. He had been shot, true, but in her fairness she had warned him. And he had had the strength to give her two black eyes and then live. Admirable qualities.

Answer 48

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 49

The Japanese area became San Francisco’s Harlem in a matter of months.

Answer 49

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 50

They never hesitated to hold up their hands in response to a teacher’s question; even when they were wrong they were wrong aggressively, while I had to be certain about all my facts before I dared to call attention to myself.

Answer 50

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 51

“all knowledge is spendable currency, depending on the market.”

Answer 51

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 52

She was stimulating instead of intimidating.

Answer 52

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 53

Where some of the other teachers went out of their way to be nice to me—to be a “liberal” with me—and others ignored me completely, Miss Kirwin never seemed to notice that I was Black and therefore different.

Answer 53

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 54

By all accounts those storytellers, born Black and male before the turn of the twentieth century, should have been ground into useless dust. Instead they used their intelligence to pry open the door of rejection and not only became wealthy but got some revenge in the bargain.

Answer 54

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 55

The needs of a society determine its ethics,

Answer 55

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 56

Stories of law violations are weighed on a different set of scales in the Black mind than in the white.

Answer 56

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 57

At school, in a given situation, we might respond with “That’s not unusual.” But in the street, meeting the same situation, we easily said, “It be’s like that sometimes.”

Answer 57

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 58

The dirt roads of Mexico fulfilled all my longing for the unusual.

Answer 58

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 59

It is hard to understand why my vivid imagination and tendency toward scariness didn’t provide me with gory scenes of bloody crashes on a risco de Mexico.

Answer 59

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 60

We drove into the city in a cold and private silence.

Answer 60

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 61

At fifteen life had taught me undeniably that surrender, in its place, was as honorable as resistance, especially if one had no choice.

Answer 61

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 62

I was a loose kite in a gentle wind floating with only my will for an anchor.

Answer 62

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 63

My car was an island and the junkyard a sea, and I was all alone and full of warm. The mainland was just a decision away.

Answer 63

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 64

His maturity embarrassed me.

Answer 64

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 65

The unsaid words pushed roughly against the thoughts that we had no craft to verbalize, and crowded the room to uneasiness.

Answer 65

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 66

Then nothing beats a trial but a failure. Give it everything you’ve got. I’ve told you many times, ‘Can’t do is like Don’t Care.’ Neither of them have a home.”

Answer 66

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 67

Sitting at a side table my mind and I wove a cat’s ladder of near truths and total lies.

Answer 67

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 68

I was hired as the first Negro on the San Francisco streetcars.

Answer 68

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 69

The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence.

Answer 69

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 70

Mother must have concluded that since I was above out-and-out lying I was also beyond deceit. She was deceived.

Answer 70

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 71

Life had a conveyor-belt quality. It went on unpursued and unpursuing,

Answer 71

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey

Question 72

you don’t have to think about doing the right thing. If you’re for the right thing, then you do it without thinking.”

Answer 72

I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and Oprah Winfrey