Marguerite Johnson is a victim of her colour and her sex. 1930s America teaches her that black is ugly; that the sexual abuse she suffers is her fault. She and her beloved brother Bailey are parcelled between their loving and god-fearing grandmother in the remote southern town of Stamps, and California where her glamorous mother lives. It is only in her teens that Marguerite emerges from the private world of muteness into which she has withdrawn and confronts the prejudice around her. She is no longer a victim but a champion of her own identity. Maya Angelou's classic autobiographical account of her childhood and early youth is a powerful and moving evocation of a black girl's struggle against her oppressors.