I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings: film and bookThe novel "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou is the first series of five autobiographical novels. This novel chronicles her life in rural Stamps, Arkansas, with her religious grandmother and St. Louis, Missouri, where her worldly and glamorous mother resides. At the age of three, Maya and her four-year-old brother Bailey were placed in the care of their paternal grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Life in southern Stamps, Arkansas was full of humiliation, violation, and displacement. These actions were exemplified for blacks by the fear of the Ku Klux Klan, the city's racial separation, and numerous incidents aimed at belittling blacks. Maya knows that being black and female means facing violence and violation. This comes into focus when she goes to live with her mother and is raped by her mother's boyfriend. When Maya is faced with this catastrophe, she tells who did this to her and the man is killed, she believes that her voice killed him. She withdraws into herself and vows never to speak again. Her mother, feeling she has done everything in her power to get Maya to talk but cannot reach her, sends Maya and her brother back to Stamps. After Maya returned to Stamps and with the help of her Teacher-Ms. Flowers starts talking again. The climax of the novel is when Maya describes her eighth grade graduation. Angelou, her classmates, and parents listen to the condescending and racist way in which the guest speaker speaks. After listening to his insults, Maya realizes that "she is the master of her destiny", expressed in the valedictory speech given by her classmate. Maya becomes a single parent at the age of eighteen, but... middle of paper... the film portrays kids who become overcome with hatred when they receive gifts from their parents. It was as if they had never known their parents existed. Another example of the difference between the book and the film is that Mr. Freeman (the mother's boyfriend) was presented as very reserved with the children. In the film he was seen as affectionate, talkative and friendly towards Maya and her brother. The film also showed Mr. Freeman's manly behavior when confronting Vivian (Maya's mother) at work. However, in the book Mr. Freeman never left the house, he always sat waiting for her at home. Although reality involves a wide range of details and it is not possible to select them all. Many writers, directors, and artists emphasize this information and diminish other information to make novels, films, plays, etc. more vivid in our imagination.