I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing

A turning point in the novel occurs when Marguerite and Bailey's father unexpectedly appears at their home to send them to live with their mother in St. Louis. While there, eight-year old Marguerite is raped by her mother's boyfriend, Mr. Freeman, which traumatizes her. Mr. Freeman is later murdered after escaping jail time, which burdens Marguerite with guilt and causes her to withdraw from everyone but her brother. Even after moving back to Stamps, Marguerite remains reclusive and nearly mute until she meets "Black aristocrat" Bertha Flowers, who supplies her with books to encourage her love of reading, and coaxes her out of her shell.

As Marguerite grows up, she experiences many other instances of racism, including an old white woman who shortens her name to "Mary," hence reducing her name to a more common one; white speakers at a graduation ceremony who disparage the black audience by implying their limited job opportunities, and the white town dentist's refusal to operate on Marguerite's rotting tooth, even when Momma reminds him of a previous loan. As commentator Mary Jane Lupton states, "She knew even then, from her experiences in Stamps and St. Louis, that she was black and female, someone with the cards stacked against her".[3]

Finally, when her brother Bailey is disturbed by the discovery of the corpse of a black man that some white men took pleasure in seeing,