本文是一篇Book Report代写范文范例,主要讨论了《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》这本书的语言的深度与情感。《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》是美国著名黑人女作家玛雅·安吉罗的第一部自传作品。该作品再现了作者童年和少女时代的坎坷与不幸,是一曲在绝境中奋起抗争的歌。
I know Why the Caged Birds Sings:Depth and Emotion Through Words
In I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (New York: Bantam Books, 1971), Maya Angelou tells the story of her earliest years. Angelou, a dancer, poet, and television producer as well as writer, has continued her life story in three more volumes of autobiography. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is the start of Maya Angelou’s story; in this book, she writes with extraordinary clarity about the pains and joys of being black in America. (introductory paragraph)
在《我知道笼中鸟为何歌唱》(纽约:班塔姆图书,1971年)一书中,玛雅·安吉洛讲述了她早年的故事。安吉洛是一位舞蹈演员、诗人、电视制片人和作家,她在另外三卷自传中继续讲述自己的人生故事。我知道为什么笼中的鸟儿歌唱是玛雅·安杰洛故事的开始;在这本书中,她非常清楚地描述了美国黑人的痛苦和快乐。(导言段)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings covers Maya Angelou’s life from age three to age sixteen. When the book opens, she is a gawky little girl in a white woman’s cut-down lavender silk dress. She has forgotten the poem she had memorized for the Easter service, and all she can do is rush out of the church. At this point, Angelou is living in Stamps, Arkansas, with her grandmother and uncle. The town is rigidly segregated: “People in Stamps used to say that the whites in our town were so prejudiced that a Negro couldn’t buy vanilla ice cream” (40). Yet Angelou has some good things in her life: her adored older brother Bailey, her success in school, and her pride in her grandmother’s quiet strength and importance in the black community. There is a laughter, too, as when a preacher is interrupted in mid-sermon by an overly enthusiastic woman shouting, “Preach it, I say preach it!” The woman, in a frenzied rush of excitement, hits the preacher with her purse; his false teeth fly out of his mouth and land at Angelou’s fee. Shortly after this incident, Angelou and her brother are taken by her father to live in California with their mother. Here, at age eight, she is raped by her mother’s boyfriend, who is mysteriously murdered after receiving only a suspended sentence for his crime. She returns, silent and withdrawn, to Stamps,where the gloom is broken when one of her mother’s friends introduces her to the magic of great book. Later, at age thirteen, Angelou returns to California. She learns how to dance. She runs away after a violent family fight and lives for a month in a junkyard. She becomes the first black female to get a job on the San Francisco streetcars. She graduates from high school eight months pregnant. And she survives. (Part 1: Summary)
《我知道为什么笼中的鸟儿歌唱》涵盖了玛雅·安吉洛从3岁到16岁的一生。当书打开时,她是一个傻乎乎的小女孩,穿着一件白色女人剪裁的淡紫色丝绸连衣裙。她忘记了为复活节仪式背的那首诗,她能做的就是冲出教堂。在这一点上,安吉洛和她的祖母和叔叔住在阿肯色州的邮票店。该镇被严格隔离:“邮票上的人过去常说,我们镇上的白人有偏见,黑人买不到香草冰淇淋”(40)。然而,安杰洛在她的生活中有一些好东西:她敬爱的哥哥贝利,她在学校的成功,她对她祖母在黑人社区中安静的力量和重要性的自豪。也有一种笑声,就像一个传教士在讲道中途被一个过于热情的女人打断时喊道:“讲道吧,我说讲道吧!”那女人兴奋得发狂,用钱包打了牧师一顿,他的假牙从他嘴里飞出来,落在了安吉洛的手里。这件事发生后不久,安杰洛和她的哥哥被她的父亲带到加利福尼亚和他们的母亲一起生活。在这里,八岁的她被她母亲的男朋友强奸,她因犯罪而被判缓刑后神秘谋杀。她沉默而孤僻地回到邮票前,当她母亲的一个朋友向她介绍这本伟大的书的魔力时,邮票上的阴郁被打破了。后来,安杰洛13岁时回到加利福尼亚。她学会了跳舞。她在一场家庭暴力冲突后离家出走,在垃圾场住了一个月。她成为第一个在旧金山电车上找到工作的黑人女性。她高中毕业时怀孕八个月。她活下来了。(第一部分:总结)
Maya Angelou’s writing style is impressive and vivid. (Topic Sentence) For example, she describes the lazy dullness of her life in Stamps: “Weekdays revolved in a sameness wheel. They turned into themselves so steadily and inevitably that each seemed to be the original of yesterday’s rough draft”(93). She also knows how to bring a scene to life, as when she describes her eighth-grade graduation. For months, she has been looking forward to this event. Knowing she will be honored for her academic successes. She is even happy with her appearance: her hair has become pretty, and her yellow dress is a miracle of hand-sewing. But the ceremony is spoiled when the speaker—a white man—implies that the only success available to blacks is in athletics. Angelou remembers: “The man’s dead words fell like bricks around the auditorium and too many settled in my belly…. The proud graduating class of 1940 had dropped their heads”(152). Later, Angelou uses a crystal-clear image to describe her father’s mistress sewing: “She worked the thread through the flowered cloth as if she were sewing the torn ends of her life together”(208). With such vivid details and figures of speech, Maya Angelou re-creates her life for her readers. (Part 2: Reaction. First Reaction Paragraph)
The strong images of the injustices suffered by blacks two generations age are well done and incredibly powerful. (Topic Sentence) The description of seven-year-old Maya—when some “powhitetrash” girls torment her dignified grandmother, calling her “Annie” and mimicking her mannerisms—is emotional and raw. In another incident, Mrs. Cullinan, Angelou’s white employer, decides that Marguerite (Angelou’s given name) is too difficult to pronounce and so renames her Mary. This loss of her name—a “hellish horror”(91)—is another humiliation suffered at white hands, and Angelou leaves Mrs. Cullinan’s employ soon afterward. Later, Angelou encounters overt discrimination when a white dentist tells her grandmother, “Annie, my policy is I’d rather stick my hand in a dog’s mouth than in a nigger’s”(160)—and only slightly less obvious prejudice when the streetcar company refuses to accept her application for a conductor’s job. Over and over again, Angelou is the victim of a white society. (Second Reaction Paragraph)
Although these injustices are disheartening, Angelou’s triumphs are inspiring. (Topic Sentence) Angelou is thrilled when she hears the radio broadcast of Joe Louis’s victory over Primo Carnera: “A Black boy. Some Black mother’s son. He was the strongest man in the world”(114). She weeps with pride when the class valedictorian leads her and her fellow eighth-graders in singing the Negro National Anthem. And there are personal victories, too. One of these comes after her father has gotten drunk in a small Mexican town. Though she has never driven before, she manages to get her father into the car and drives fifty miles through the night as he lies intoxicated in the backseat. Finally, she rejoices in the birth of her son: “he was beautiful and mine. Totally mine. No one had bought him for me”(245). Angelou show, through these examples that she is proud of her race—and of herself. (Third Reaction Paragraph)
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is a remarkable book. Angelou could have been just another casualty of race prejudice. Yet by using her intelligence, sensitivity, and determination, she succeeds in spite of the odds against her. And by writing with such power, she lets the readers share her defeats and joys. She also teaches a vital lesson: With strength and persistence, all people can escape their cages—and sing their songs.(Concluding Paragraph)