I Know Why The Caged Bird Cannot Read Summary

In “I Know Why the Caged Bird Cannot Read” Francine Prose confronts this plummeting interest in literature among teenagers. The United States has been afflicted with this disinterest for some time—young students are instilled with passion for math and science yet care little for English and literature. Attempting to explain this disparity, Prose argues that mediocre literature options and shoddy teaching methods leave students without any connection to the material they read. Unfortunately, while Prose’s ideas have some merit, her fallacious arguments, forceful tone, and jumpy logic negate any real impact her words could have. Prose begins her argument by appealing to the emotions of parents who only want best for their child. She talks about how her own experiences of seeing love of literature slowly be fettered out of the population until very
Prose makes the argument, through several wordy paragraphs that explore tangents and wander aimlessly, that schools are increasingly obsessed with diversifying their literature as opposed to actually finding well-written material. To support this point she brings up actual excerpts from the critically acclaimed I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. “‘Youth and social approval allied themselves with me and we trammeled memories of slights and insults. The wind of our swift passage remodeled my features. Lost tears were pounded to mud and then to dust.’” (Prose par. 12). Prose argues that this style of writing is convoluted and crammed with incorrect analogies and illogical metaphors, and she is right. Prose then makes the strange decision to attempt putting To Kill a Mockingbird in the same category of poor writing, but she offers no actual examples from the book to substantiate her claims. Without putting forth any real evidence to prove the book is of low quality, this non sequitur fallacy fails to