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Send off
Maya at 3 years old and her brother, Bailey at 4 years old are sent to a racist Southern town, Stamps, Arkansas to live with their paternal grandmother after their parents' divorce. -
Family hides Uncle Willie
Momma hides Uncle Willie in a bin of potatoes and onions to protect him from racial violence after a former white sheriff warns her that a mob is looking for a scapegoat to lynch. The warning comes after whites claim that a Black man has "messed with" a white woman, and the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) is seeking revenge on Black men. -
Christmas Day
Maya and Bailey unexpectedly receive Christmas gifts from their parents at seven and eight years old. They realize that their parents are alive after telling themselves "they were dead" for long. This moment is significant because they are confronted by the painful reality of their abandonment, that they even begin to blame themselves. Withal, they also receive no message from either parents. Their father sends them his own photograph, expressive of his self centeredness -
Father's Appearance
After being absent from the children’s lives for years, their father arrives in Arkansas, Stamps unexpectedly taking them to live with their mother in St. Louis. Maya felt neither glad nor sad to see him go when they reach St. Louis. She regards him as a stranger, for he shows little genuine effort to care for her. For she doesn't believe he's her father. -
Maya's Rape Experience in St. Louis
The children move in with their mother and her boyfriend, Mr Freeman. At 8 years old, Marguerite is sexually assaulted and raped by Mr. Freeman. Shame and guilt make her misrepresent and interpret Mr. Freeman’s abuse as affection. After being threatened, she later tells Bailey who then tells his uncles, and the case is taken to court. He is later arrested, gets released a day later but is beaten to death. His death rather torments her as she thinks her lie in court caused his death. -
Maya's vow of silence
After the trial and death of her rapist, Maya and Bailey are sent back to Stamps, Arkansas. She chooses to not speak to anyone but Bailey which she does for 6 years out of guilt because she thought she was the cause of Mr Freeman's death.
Quoted from ikwtcbs :
“I thought, my voice killed him,” ......... “I killed that man because I told his name. And then I thought I would never speak again, because my voice would kill anyone.” -
Maya's encounter with Mrs Bertha Flowers
After 6 years of being mute, she met Mrs Flowers who teaches her about the power of the human voice. Mrs Flowers helps Maya speak by encouraging her to read aloud and memorize poems in hope that she's able to connect poetry with her own life and gain the confidence to start talking again. With time however, Maya does begin to speak -
Maya works for Mrs Viola Cullinan
Maya takes a job in Mrs. Cullinan’s house at 10 y/o. Ms Cullinan and one of her friends infuriated Maya by suggesting that Mrs. Cullinan calls her “Mary” because “Margaret” is too long. Even worse, Maya notes, her name is Marguerite, not Margaret. She deliberately breaks her heirloom china in hope to get fired, making it look like an accident. The woman then insults Maya with a racist slur. This moment is significant signaling her deepened sense of self-worth. -
Bailey's First Love and Heartbreak
Bailey begins playing "house” with other girls around his age (11 years old) in a makeshift tent in the backyard as an adolescent. During the sessions, he brings a girl into the tent, and instructs Marguerite to watch, and then imitates sex with the girl. He invites Joyce (4 yrs older) into the tent and she tells him he is doing it wrong with Marguerite tries to stop them, foreseeing what Joyce intends, but Joyce sends Marguerite away. Then suddenly she disappears with a much older man. -
Eighth-grade Graduation
The white speaker, Mr. Edward Donleavy, gives a speech bragging about the many people that graduated from the school who got into good colleges, etc. Maya feels he tarnished the atmosphere by insinuating that black children Consequently, the graduation is significant because it brings attention to the racism and discrimination she experiences. The valedictorian afterwards leads by signing “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing,” a song known as the Negro National Anthem. -
Dentist Visit
This chapter's significance shows how cruel and inhumane the racists in Stamps could be. Dr. Lincoln was lent money by Momma and thinks she is obliged to do him favors, but doesn’t consider returning her favors. Maya and her toothache are so beneath him that he will not even glance in the girl's direction. He refuses and goes even further by saying he would 'rather stick his hand in a dog's mouth’ than that of an African American.’ -
Bailey loading up a Black man's body
Bailey saw a black man’s dead, rotting body pulled from a pond. A white man instructed Bailey to help load the body into a wagon and pretended to lock Bailey and the other Black men in with the body. He is shaken by the white man's satisfaction at seeing the body and cannot reconcile himself with the facts of racism. The chapter also tells us that Momma believes Bailey reached the age where it's unsafe for him to be Black and male in the South, planning to send them again. -
Move again
Maya and bailey move back in with their mother, Vivian, and her boyfriend, Daddy Clidell to Califrnia. After Vivian and Daddy Clidell marry, the family moves to San Francisco. San Francisco represented an entirely different world from the rural South. -
Attends high school in San Francisco
Maya attended Mission High School and won a scholarship to study dance and drama at San Francisco's Labor School. -
Run Away
Upon returning from Mexico, Maya gets into physical altercation with Dolores after insulting Maya's mother and in which Maya is stabbed with scissors and chased with a hammer. She then spends the next month living homeless in a junkyard with homeless children before rejoining her mother and brother in San Francisco. Living in that junkyard, though, she made many friends of different races. -
Vacation Gone wrong with Daddy Bailey
Daddy Bailey spends her summer vacation with Maya. Part of the adventure involves a trip to Mexico. During this trip, they go to cantina (A bar) where Maya loses her father, has to drive the car, and she feels "in control of her fate". This is the first time Maya has ever driven. It is through this trip that she is also able to see her father in a new light, who is comfortable and less on guard in Mexico. -
Maya gets a JOB!
Maya becomes the first black and female streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Maya's success is a testament to her intellectual maturity and her determination in the face of obstacles. She has grown from an insecure black child in the South to an intellectual black woman blazing trails in a northern city in California -
Phase on Sexuality
Maya views lesbianism as some kind of disease one develops, frightened by her own sexual maturation. She confesses to her mother that something is “growing” on her vagina and her mother reads about female anatomy. Maya's relieved that has been experiencing normal sexual maturation. Though she doesn’t entirely understand what the word means, she sets about trying to correct it by having experimenting. -
Pregnant
Due to her confusing introduction to sex as a child, Maya is uncertain whether or not she is a lesbian so she experiments with a man and ends up giving birth to a son. -
Baby!!
9 months later, Maya gives birth to a baby boy and at first she is very scared and worried she will smother the baby and kill it when she sleeps . She has no idea what she is doing. She has a conversation with Vivian who tells her to sleep with the baby to make a bond. Maya naps with the boy and she realized she could be the mother she never had. -
Move to the North
Maya moves to the North and eventually finds living in the North less racist, with more opportunities to find work as an African American. She was able to create and secure a job driving the famous trolley cars of San Francisco.