I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Essay

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“Every 98 seconds, an American is sexually assaulted. And every 8 minutes, that victim is a child. Meanwhile, only 6 out of every 1,000 perpetrators will end up in prison” (Statistics). My adversity connects with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings because in the book she is sexually abused by her mom’s boyfriend and I was sexually abused by my grandfather. In the book it says, “I was hurt and for a time felt lonelier than ever. But then I forgot about him, and even the memory of his holding me precious melted into the general darkness just beyond the great blinkers of childhood” (Angelou 75). When this happened to me I thought about it every day, but as I got older everything started to become calmer and calmer and it somewhat slipped away. I …show more content…
I also liked seeing how even though she had so many adversities, her life turned out well. This book was really inspiring for me for those reasons.
When I was about seven years old I was sexual assaulted by my grandfather. Because I was so young, I didn’t really understand what had happened, but I knew that it wasn’t appropriate. I made the mistake of keeping what had happened to me to myself for years. As I kept it to myself, I learned to live with the fact that it had happened and as I grew up, I learned what exactly had happened, and what it was called. I was scared of what was going to happen if I had told, so I kept it to myself longer, and longer. Eventually I was 15 years old and I still had this secret to myself. Having this to myself for so long definitely took a toll on me, because it was always on the back of my mind, and it was something that changes you for better or worse. It changes how you think about everything and how you view different ideas. Eventually I did tell my parents, which was a hard conversation, especially for my mom and I, because it was her father. I then decided to go to the police and report what had happened years before. Since it happened in another state, the court system in South Carolina had to figure out what
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