“I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” by Maya Angelou: Memoir’s author and protagonist have different names, and “well-known forgetfulness”

I have just started this book, and since it has been very popular, I presume that most readers have not found the above issues problematic. The protagonist, Marguerite, will probably get “Maya” as a nickname, stage name, or pen name. And her “well-known forgetfulness” (1, p. 1) may have been nothing more than anxiety as a child at church. But it is conceivable that Maya and Marguerite are different personalities, and that her “well-known forgetfulness” is a symptom of nonclinical multiple personality. I will keep reading.

Comment (added same day): If Maya is just a pen name, this would be the first time I've seen an author use both her pen name and her real name in the same work.

Now, the author could explain that Maya is a later name, not used until the this memoir was written. Nevertheless, using both names simultaneously—in the same work—is like multiple personality, in which more than one personality exists simultaneously, but each having its own age and role. In this case, Marguerite would be a child-aged alternate personality and Maya an adult-aged alternate personality or host personality.

The idea that she was named "My" or "Maya" after her brother learned she was My sister (1, p. 68) appears to be the author's belated excuse for her being known as "Marguerite" earlier in the memoir, when her brother had already known she was his sister and their grandmother had always called her "Marguerite." It appears to be a belated rationalization.

I do consider it plausible that she had an additional personality named "My" for the above reason. But that should have been accounted for at the beginning of the memoir, perhaps as a nickname, not as an afterthought, after the author or an editor noted the discrepancy.

Actually, "My" sounds like a way her brother might have referred to her among the rough crowd they later knew in St. Louis, as a way to say she was his, and therefore not to be molested. But the author's explanation of the discrepancy between the author's and protagonist's names is definitely belated and incomplete.

1. Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. Foreword by Oprah Winfrey. New York, Ballantine Books, 1969/2015.