Maya Angelou. The woman I was named after. She has a story so personal and so meaningful for the time it was placed in. An iconic poem by Angelou with a powerful message is “Still I Rise”. After reading “Still I Rise” in class, I began researching and loving every interview and moment captured about her. The second I read her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, for this assignment- I was captivated by her life.
“Still I Rise” is written from the perspective of Maya herself, she is speaking to her audience of oppressors about how she has overcome racism, criticism, sexism, and other personal obstacles in her life with pride and grace. It describes her personal struggle through life and how she managed to overcome the many challenges she faced and how she will continue on her life journey. This poem is historically rooted with mentions of slavery, a “past of pain” (par. 8, line 31) and “gifts of ancestors” (par. 9, 39), however she is speaking in the present and how she is embarking on a new journey. In this paper, I would like to explore the historical context of this poem and what events occured in Angelou’s life that influenced Still I Rise.
“You may write me down in history / With your bitter twisted lies” (par. 1, 1-2). Maya introduces the poem using strong words like “bitter” and “twisted”, hinting at the horrible things that colored people had to put up with in America while Maya was growing up. In her first memoir, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, Angelou shares that as a little girl she often wished she was a white girl with blonde hair and blue eyes (3). African American people in her community had always been seen as inferior and treated as a subspecies. Later in the poem, she foreshadows the painful past her ancestors have had by referring to the “huts” that her people need to emerge from. She describes how deeply rooted the idea of inferiority is in her people’s psyche by comparing it to the roots of trees. Despite the racial slurs thrown at her, the racially driven violence around her and the discrimination she faced Maya continued to “rise”.
At the age of eight Angelou was sexually abused and raped by her mother's boyfriend, a man named Freeman. Freeman was found guilty during the trial, but was only sentenced to one day and night in prison. When he was released Angelou’s uncles presumably murdered him. The emotional trauma resulted in Maya going voluntary mute for five years. She talked to no one, with the exception of her brother Bailey, “I had sold myself to the Devil and there could be no escape. The only thing I could do was to stop talking to people other than Bailey…if I talked to anyone else that person might die too” (87) said Maya in her autobiography, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Her eight-year old logic had told her she had killed a man. Because of her silence, she was sent back to live with her grandmother where she faced verbal abuse from the townspeople and her peers. “Do you want to see me broken? / Bowed head and lowered eyes? / Shoulders falling down like teardrops, / Weakened by soulful cries?” says Maya in “Still I Rise”. She uses rhetorical questions to boldly ask them what they want to see. She doesn’t want to allow them see her spirit “broken”. She knew they expected her to walk around with “lowered eyes” as if she doesn’t deserve to live. She is almost arrogant in the way she asks these questions, because she never gave in to their abuse. After five years of silence that she spent reading and memorizing poetry, Maya decided to speak again- and she had a lot to say.
At the young age of seventeen, to support her infant child as a single mom, Angelou started to dance at nightclubs and strip joints in San Francisco. It is little known, that during this time Maya was briefly addicted to drugs. After being discovered by choreographers, her career skyrocketed. Angelou was singing in the Cabaret and soon became known as ‘Miss Calypso’ in which her first album was named after. In 1954, she toured Europe with production of the opera, Porgy and Bess. Angelou then appeared in off-broadway that inspired the 1957 movie, Calypso Heat Wave, in which she sang and performed her own songs. “Does my sexiness upset you / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I’ve got diamonds at the meeting of my thigh” (par. 7, 25-29) says Maya in “Still I Rise”. She teases her oppressors by claiming she is sexy and confident. She knows that society would not tolerate a confident black woman, so she rubs the fact that she is strong in their faces. She continues this idea throughout the poem,“Does my sassiness upset you…/ Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells / Pumping in my living room” (par. 2, 5-9) She claims that she walks around as if she had oil wells, which would make her wealthy. The idea that a black woman would be wealthy in 1950’s America would seem ridiculous. However, she wants to tell everybody that she walks as if she is wealthy, ignoring the fact that she could never be. I cannot help but admire her attitude. By the time of her death in 2014, according to the New York Daily News, Angelou’s net worth was between ten and thirty-four million dollars. By walking like she had oil wells, she soon turned that metaphor into a reality.
Everyone in the world has gone to bed one night or another with fear, or pain, or loss, or disappointment. Yet each of us have also awakened the next morning and risen. We somehow get out of bed and carry on with our days. I believe it is amazing how resilient and perserverent the human spirit is, despite it all. When Angelou says, “Just like the moons and suns / With the certainty of tides / Just like hopes springing high / Still I rise” (par. 3, 15-19), I believe this is what she is talking about. She compares herself to the moon, sun and flowing tides. These are all things that happen every day. We know the sun will rise, we know the tides will drift in and out. These things are inevitable, just like Angelou rising up against her oppressors. She refuses to allow herself become another victim. “Leaving behind nights of terror and fear / I rise / Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear / I rise” (par. 9, 36-39) This stanza makes me think of all the dark nights Angelou must have faced throughout her life, yet after every dark night, there’s a bright day after that.
Maya Angelou describes herself as a “black ocean, leaping and wide…/ welling and swelling” she bears in the tide (par. 8, 31-33 ). By using this metaphor she suggests she is big and strong. She is limitless and unstoppable, just like the sea. Angelou was the first black woman to write a screenplay and the first female poet to recite a poem at a US Presidential Inauguration. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010 and has worked with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X during the Civil Rights Movement. Angelou has won three Grammys for her spoken word and played a vital role during the decolonization of Africa. She is a best-selling author, poet, professor, singer, dancer, actress, philanthropist, journalist and activist. Her gifts were born out of pain. The child who did not speak turned into a women with a voice that inspired nations. I truly believe Maya Angelou left a legacy of grace, strength, and courage that will continue to inspire us for centuries to come. She overcame obstacles most could not imagine, and she used her gift of language to change the world up until the very end. Maya's life will always stand out to me and many others as proof of overcoming hardships and being such a beautiful and spiritual person. I want to leave you with a quote from her, one of my personal favorites, “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass” (Girl About Town).