Maya Angelou, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, tells the story of her troubled childhood, in which she begins with the false hope of being a white girl with blond hair and ends with a strong sense of pride in being black. The book begins with young Maya's longing to be what she was not:
Wouldn't they be surprised when one day I woke out of my black ugly dream, and my real hair, which was long and blond, would take the place of the kinky mass that Momma wouldn't let me straighten? (2).
The book ends with Maya proudly giving birth to a child of her own, and with a powerful and liberating awareness of her own identity as a black woman:
The fact that the adult American Negro female emerges a formidable character is often met with amazement, distaste and even belligerence. It is seldom accepted as an inevitable outcome of the struggle won by survivors and deserves respect if not enthusiastic acceptance (231).
This enlightenment is the reward of Maya's having endured and overcome the suffering she experiences as a young black female unhappy with her own identity. This suffering is especially intense for young Maya because of her great sensitivity: "If growing up is painful for the Southern Black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult" (3).
Maya finds solace and hope not only in her own strength to endure suffering, but in the field of literature in which she would later find expression for her own despair and salvation:
During these years in Stamps, I met and fell in love with William Shakespeare. . . . It was Shakespeare who said, "When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes." It was a state with which I felt myself most familiar (11).
She finds in Shakespeare and other writing the realization that she is not alone in her suffering, but rather is a part of a line of similar sufferers who make up a rich vein in human history.