I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

ANGELOU, Maya.

Item Number: 2457

New York: Random House, 1969.

First edition of the author’s critically acclaimed first book. Octavo. Original black cloth. First issue, with top edge stained red. Signed by the author, “Joy Maya Angelou”. Some remnants of what looks to be a former bookplate on the front free endpaper, a very good copy in a very good dust jacket with a closed tear to the front panel and some wear to the spine tips.

"This testimony from a black sister marks the beginning of a new era in the minds and hearts of all black men and women... I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, liberates the reader into life simply because Maya Angelou confronts her own life with such a moving wonder, such a luminous dignity. I have no words for this achievement, but I know that not since the days of my childhood, when the people in books were more real than the people one saw every day, have I found myself so moved... Her portrait is a biblical study in life in the midst of death." (James Baldwin)