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Sign up todayI Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
A BBC Radio 4 dramatisation
Length
1 hour 8 minutes
Language
English
Narrators
Adjoa Andoh, Cecilia Noble, Full Cast, Indie Gjesdal & Pippa Bennett-Warner
This audiobook uses AI narration.
We’re taking steps to make sure AI narration is transparent.
Learn moreA BBC Radio 4 dramatisation of Maya Angelou's poignant, powerful autobiography, starring Adjoa Andoh, Indie Gjesdal and Pippa Bennett-Warner.
Abandoned by their parents, Maya and her older brother Bailey are sent to live with their grandmother and uncle in the small Southern town of Stamps in Arkansas. Struggling with rejection, they endure the prejudice of their white neighbours and suffer several racist incidents.
One day, their father unexpectedly returns and takes the children to live with their mother in St Louis, Missouri. Aged only eight, Maya is abused by her mother's boyfriend, an experience that haunts her for a lifetime. Filled with guilt and shame, she refuses to speak to anyone except Bailey – until she meets Mrs Bertha Flowers, who encourages her love of books, helping her to find her voice and regain her own strong spirit.
Maya Angelou’s debut memoir is a modern American classic, beloved worldwide, which recounts a youth filled with curiosity, wonder, disappointment, frustration, tragedy, and hard-won independence. This radio dramatisation, starring Adjoa Andoh, Indie Gjesdal and Pippa Bennett-Warner, plays out her extraordinary story with dramatic verve and poetic brilliance.
Cast:
Narrator (Older Maya)...Adjoa Andoh
Maya...Indie Gjedsal/Pippa Bennett-Warner
Bailey...Roshawn Hewitt
Momma...Cecilia Noble
Uncle Willie/Freeman/Daddy...Richard Pepple
Steward/Lawyer...John Lightbody
Girl...Francesca Elise
Mother...Ellen Thomas
Bertha Flowers...Nikki Amuka-Bird
Spanish voices... Maider Jáuregui, Rocío Mesonero, Celia Romo, Julio Villa-García, Hugo Sánchez and Francisco Oda-Ángel @ Instituto Cervantes,Manchester
Receptionist...Lauren Cornelius
Dramatised by Patricia Cumper
Produced by Pauline Harris
Maya Angelou was raised in Stamps, Arkansas. In addition to her bestselling autobiographies, including I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and The Heart of a Woman, she wrote numerous volumes of poetry, among them Phenomenal Woman, And Still I Rise, On the Pulse of Morning, and Mother. Maya Angelou died in 2014.