Still I Rise- Maya Angelou

• Context:

  - Maya Angelou is a poet and civil rights activist

  - Also a singer, dancer, actor, director and educator

  - Very famous and powerful speaker, important and influential voice

  - Rape survivor, against racism and sexism

  - Confronts and challenges racist and sexist stereotypes
• Points:

  - Reclaims the history of herself and her people by challenging racist and sexist attitudes

  - Refuses to be ashamed of her race and sexuality, subverts stereotypes and turns the negatives into positives

  - Uses a confident tone to assert her power and celebrate her identity

  - Structure: 2nd person, confrontational tone, challenges views of men, racists and oppressors, rhetorical questions followed by answer (Q&A), truncation
• "You may write me down in history with your bitter, twisted lies, you may trod me in the very dirt but still, like dust, I'll rise"


  - Opening refers to the history of racism and slavery and her lack of civil rights

  - Confrontational tone

  - Implies that she is all powerful, unstoppable, nothing can ever bring her down or change her views

  - Unable to be silenced, her power overrides the lies
• "Just like moons and like suns, with the certainty of tides, just like hopes springing high, still I'll rise"


  - Confident and powerful tone

  - Figurative comparison of herself to unstoppable natural forces

  - Shows she is unashamed, certainty of her pride and protectiveness of her culture

  - Her assertion of power
• "Does my haughtiness offend you? Don't you take it awful hard 'cause I laugh like I've got gold mines diggin' in my own backyard"


  - Uses a Q&A format, rhetorical questions to subvert the stereotypes and challenges them

  - Shows her pride, she is comfortable and confident with who she is

  - Reclaiming the narrative, she has her own inner riches and takes pleasure in her life, despite the controversies brought upon her

  - Colonial reference to gold mines, reclaiming the treasures that are rightfully theirs
• "You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness, but still, like air, I'll rise"


  - At first she is the passive subject, she describes the aggressions directed at her by the silent listener

  - Then she becomes the active subject

  - Her assertion of power/ self-belief

  - Refusal to be hurt by aggressions towards her

  - "shoot", "cut", "kill" show the damage that the oppressors could potentially inflict, however she challenges them
• "Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise."

  - Reclaims her history and identity in a positive way

  - Not ashamed nor hindered by other people's perceptions

  - Refuses to present herself as a victim of history (personal and word)

  - Links to the Transatlantic Slave Trade, and its ongoing legacy of racism, she refuses to be hurt/ restrained by it

  - Repetition of "I rise" is truncated for shortened effect

  - Creates a dramatic effect of rising - from pain and oppression

  - Pride and love for he culture