Still I Rise

Angelou’s speaker is likely a version of the poet herself as the speaker’s tone and content reflect ideas and emotions that have proven important to Angelou over her life and career. The speaker begins the poem by addressing an unspecified “you” (Line 1), and many readers assume this “you” to be a white person. By opening the poem with a reference to “history” (Line 1), the speaker both acknowledges historical oppression and personal trauma while dismissing the possibility that this history will forever be a limitation. By addressing the irony of their oppressor’s actions, the speaker claims to be more than the product of this history. Attempts to keep the speaker down in “the very dirt” (Line 3) actually give the speaker the ability to survive and overcome.

The speaker begins to unpack the “bitter, twisted lies” (Line 2) of their oppressor in the next stanzas of the poem. The tone of the poem becomes a paradoxical mix of anger and confidence as they reframe the white male perspective of the speaker to reflect their own confident pride in their own Black identity. The speaker prods their target with loaded rhetorical questions. The structure of these taunts and questions reflects the speaker’s argument. For example, her “sassiness” (Line 5) is the subject of the sentence, not the other person who is “upset” (Line 5). By focusing on the speaker’s self, the speaker centers their self in the conversation and decenters the feelings and fragility of the white oppressor. Their questions also focus on traits linked with women: “sassiness” (Line 5), “haughtiness” (Line 17), and “sexiness” (Line 25). These words have negative associations, and the speaker uses them ironically. By reclaiming these traits, the speaker rescues their sense of self from historical oppression embodied by this language.

The speaker notes that their joy seems to make their oppressor miserable and their response questions why that is. The speaker’s behavior causes the other person to be “beset with gloom” (Line 6). Their comparison of their walk to the walk of a person who has “got oil wells” (Line 7) illustrates how the speaker values their body, which seems to bewilder their oppressor.

In stanza three, the speaker compares their resilience and their ability to succeed to the “certainty of tides” (Line 10) and the rising of the sun and moon.

But stanza four turns to an image that contrasts with the assured tone in stanza three. Here, the speaker describes how they imagine that their oppressor would like them to behave, and they ask if the oppressor would like to see them “broken” (Line 13) with “[b]owed head and lowered eyes” (Line 14. This imagined person, with “[s]houlders falling down like teardrops” (Line 15), sounds like a someone who is downtrodden and “[w]eakened” (Line 16). By explicitly describing what is expected of them, the speaker criticizes what they see as an unreasonable demand.

The speaker returns to the rhetorical strategy they employed in the second stanza, focusing here on how “haughtiness” (Line 17) may “offend” the other person (Line 17). Once again, a negative word is used to describe a trait that might otherwise be understood as a sense of pride and self-confidence. The possibility of offending should not outweigh one’s pride in one’s own identity, the speaker argues, even if it means that the other person “take[s] it awful hard” (Line 18). Rather than defer to their oppressor, the speaker laughs like she “got gold mines” (Line 19). Her emphasis on the location of the gold mines, that they are in “my own backyard” (Line 20), highlights how the speaker feels like they have the right to their identity. The other person cannot dictate what the speaker does with what is rightfully their own.

This stanza also exemplifies Angelou’s use of an informal Black vernacular in the poem. The poet emphasizes the performative quality of both the subject of the poem and the poem itself. By using words like “got” (Lines 7, 19, 27), “Diggin’” (Line 20), and “‘Cause” (Lines 7, 19), Angelou insists on the artistic value of the Black vernacular. The speaker, who takes pride in their whole identity, also values self-expression.

Stanza 6 marks another shift in the poem. While the beginning of the poem, focuses on the experiences of one person, this stanza makes a collective reading of the poem more clear. The violence to which the speaker refers reflects generational trauma they may experience as a Black person and the collective experiences of Black Americans as a group. The “you” whom the speaker addresses also becomes a collective group rather than an individual oppressor. This group “may shoot” (Line 21), “cut” (Line 22), and “kill” (Line 23) Black Americans and use their “words” (Line 21), “ eyes” (Line 22), and “hatefulness” (Line 23) to inflict more violence. Regardless, the assertive and defiant tone of the speaker, as a representative of Black Americans as a whole, assures the reader that Black people everywhere will “still” (Line 24) rise.

Stanza seven repeats the strategy of stanzas two and five. This time, the speaker focuses on their “sexiness” (Line 25) and its power to “upset” the other person (Line 25). Here, the poem shifts in both tone and in rhythm. These last two stanzas contain a more determined tone and express the speaker’s assured confidence. These stanzas are also longer, creating a rhythm that feels like momentum rising. Stanza eight makes a strong claim that the speaker will come “[o]ut of the huts of history’s shame” (Line 29) and “[u]p from a past that’s rooted in pain” (Line 31). The speaker describes their self as “a black ocean” (Line 33), suggesting that their people’s history is as engulfing as an immense body of water.

The poem’s final stanza emphasizes the speaker’s determined attitude. The poem ends with a declaration that affirms that it is possible to rise above history and bigotry. The alternating repetition of the phrase “I rise” (Lines 41-43) in the last three lines of the poem makes for the sound of a rising crescendo, and the musical sound functions as a parallel to the speaker’s striving to rise above the personal tragedies of their life and the collective trauma of Black Americans.