SOURCE: Loos, Pamela. “A Life Line.” In Overcoming Adversity: Maya Angelou, pp. 21–31. Philadelphia: Chelsea House Publishers, 2000.

In the following essay, Loos examines the implications of Marguerite's muteness in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

“I was liked … for just being Marguerite Johnson.”

—I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, 1970

“Into this cocoon I crept,” Maya Angelou wrote about withdrawing into muteness in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. She felt safer when she was silent, and also just by being back in Stamps. There were no tall buildings, noisy cabs and trucks, or bustling family gatherings. In Stamps, she thought, nothing ever happened, so nothing else could hurt her. And unlike her mother's relatives, people in Stamps accepted her muteness. After all, they supposed, she was only trying to adjust to being back in the South, and she had been so delicate to begin with, others...