Maya Angelou"I had decided that St. Louis was a foreign country. In my mind I had only been there for a few weeks. As soon as I realized that I had not made it to my home, I secretly ran away in the forest of Robin's Hood and the caves of Alley Oop, where all reality was unreal and this too changed my day with the same shield I had used in Stamps: "I did not come to stay." In Maya Angelou's autobiographical novel , "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," the tender Marguerite Johnson, renamed Maya by her refined brother Bailey, discovers all the splendors and agonies of growing up in the prejudice-filled America of the early 20th century as she rotates through the slow life of rural Stamps, Arkansas and the fast-paced societies of St. Louis, Missouri and San Francisco, California taught Maya several casual aspects of life while showing her segregated America from coast to coast. When Maya was three, her beautiful successful mother sent her and Bailey from California to Stamps to be under the care of her grandmother, Mrs. Annie Henderson. Soon considered their real mother, "Mama" raised her grandchildren according to strict Southern principles such as: "wash your feet before you go to bed; always pray to the savior and you will be forgiven; chores and school come first of the game; and help those in need and you will be helped too." With these basic principles, Maya and Bailey grew up and grew wiser in Stamps, watching each year as Negro cotton pickers came and went with loads and tributes comparable to those of any white man in the county. However, one day their father arrived in Stamps in an extravagant way. and asked his children to come home with him to St. Louis. Bailey, an adventurer eager to leave the quaint and simple family life of Arkansas, immediately agreed, but "soft-hearted" Maya was frightened by the idea of ​​big cities and strange people. In St. Louis, where she was introduced to an entirely different lifestyle, Maya experienced harrowing moments that made her long for the quiet safety of Stamps. "Mother Dear's" boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, sexually abused her twice, and when she testified in court against him, the "important connections" her mother had to St. Louis gangsters beat her to death Mr. Freeman to ease the shame. from the family. In court, Maya lied, saying he only touched her once, and the guilt of lying to her closest friend, her brother Bailey, made Maya go silent...