I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (pages 220-281)

Summary

Marguerite spends the summer with her dad and his new girlfriend Dolores in Southern California. Marguerite has trouble dealing with Dolores because Dolores is kind of a neat freak. Marguerite's dad takes her to Mexico which gets Dolores mad because he never took her to Mexico, making her think that he favors his children more than his wife to be. In Mexico, Marguerite's dad cheats on Dolores and gets drunk forcing Marguerite to drive his car in order for them to get home. Marguerite having never drove a day in her life, drives her dad's car towards home, with her drunk father sleeping in the back seat. when they arrived home dolores and marguerite dad has an argument and he walks out, then marguerite and dolores had an argument which turned into a fight and ended with Marguerite getting cut. when Marguerite;s father tells her she has to leave the house for a couple of days to go stay with some of his friends Marguerite decided to run away. After experiencing the harsh streets of california and enduring the hardship of having to live inside of a car, Marguerite knew it was time for her to go home, she she called her mother and she sent a ticket for her to return back to San Francisco. Marguerite's brother Bailey starts to have problems with their mother and moves out because he felt that he was a man and doesn't need no one telling him what to do. Marguerite gets a job as a conductor on the bus after several times of being turned down by trolley companies. Having being through a lot Marguerite starts to question her womanhood. She went through a phase thinking that she was either a lesbian or a hermaphrodite because she doesn't seem to have what other girls have. In order to prove to herself that she was straight she decided to have sex with a boy from her street which ended up with her getting pregnant at the age of sixteen. With her new son in her life she no longer felt empty or lonely, she now knew what it meant to be accepted and loved.

Quotation

" Without willing it, I had gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. and the worst part of my awareness was that i didn't know what i was aware of" (Angelou 264).

Reaction

In a weird way I can connect to the quote because sometimes act like I know something when I really don't because I don't want to seem stupid. And sometimes I know that something is going to happen, but when it does happen it cathces me off guard. With Marguerite feeling this way it shows that she was growing up and knew that what ever she wanted her life to be, that was what it would be.