What is the tone at the beginning of "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings"?

When Maya Angelou wrote "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings," she was attempting to expose the divisive racial prejudice that had permeated society for so long. She wanted, essentially, not just evoke sympathy, but empathy for the people suffering because of this as well. The main character is bossed around, disrespected, and the victim of white male and female domination, as well as patriarchal rules and structures.

At the beginning of the story, Maya feels both unhappy at her looks and how she thinks she appears to the world, as well as her feelings of displacement that she suffers. She feels that she does not belong anywhere. Throughout her childhood, she is plagued with wearing ill-fitting clothes and overhearing talk of how ugly she is, but she still finds reading and has many deep questions about her station in life and the plight of other black Americans that she is surrounded with. For this reason, I would say that the beginning of the book has quite a philosophical undertone, while at the same time being a bit sorrowful and tortured. Still, at times she approaches situations with a deep sarcasm and sense of the comical.