The prologue describes an event in which Angelou, as a small child, is reciting a poem in church. Feeling ugly because she imagined in vain that the dress her grandmother made her would be so pretty that she would be seen as a beautiful white child, she forgets the poem and then wets her pants as she flees the church is embarrassment.   

The story begins in 1931,as Maya, age three, and her elder brother, Bailey, are sent to stamps, Arkansas, to live with their paternal grandmother, whom they call momma, after their parent's breakup. Momma owns the only store in the African American part of town. The children settle into life with Momma, helping her at the store and learning to read and  do arithmetic.