I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings — Maya Angelou (1969)

Maya Angelou's debut memoir — covering her childhood in the segregated South, her experience of rape at age 8, her subsequent years of silence, and her gradual recovery through literature — is one of the most powerful works of autobiographical writing in American literature and a foundational text of African-American literary tradition. Its frank treatment of childhood trauma has made it among the most challenged books in American schools.