Maya Angelou has a true gift for imagery, that's for sure. But I've noticed throughout her book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, that she throws in bits of information that would normally be a big deal to other authors in unassuming ways that catch the reader off guard. It's almost as if she wants you to perfectly visualize the small details but form your own assumptions of everything big. This is an unusual technique, but it actually adds to the gravity of some situations because it lets the reader know that this event or topic was so big in her life that she didn't feel the need to use colorful words to describe it. She just wrote it out.
For example, on page 203 of this book, she says, "But Momma left for Arkansas without me with her solid air packed around her like cotton." Minimal imagery, minimal words. She simply states what happens. When I read this, I initially thought she was a bit heartless to give the woman who raised her such an unceremonious goodbye, but I realized it was just the opposite. She loved this woman so much that to write about watching her leave for the last time would have turned this memoir into a requiem of sorts for her lost grandmother. She was moving on to a new place in her life, and this was the transition.
I also noticed this odd lack of imagery in her tale of her pregnancy and the birth of her son. 7 pages. That's all she used to tell the reader about her life-changing experience of conceiving and bearing a son. However, I've realized that this lack of words doesn't correlate to a lack of emotion. In fact, her minimal account of his birth emphasizes how big the event was in her life because even in that short chapter, I still can feel her love for him. Maya Angelou, bravo.
I love the title of this post! I completely agree with your thought of Maya's almost emotionally incapable way of writing. I feel as though she writes without much meaning because she feels that if the reader comes to the conclusion of how Maya was feeling at that time it will connect the reader on an emotional level he/she could have never reached on their own. It causes the reader to have the same emotions Maya did which really encompasses the reader into the story, almost as if they had experienced the event themselves.
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