Key Quote
“"I rise / I rise / I rise"”
Maya Angelou · Still I Rise
Focus: “rise”
The triple repetition at the poem's climax transforms a simple verb into a triumphant declaration — each repetition gathers force, moving from personal defiance to collective, historical liberation.
Technique 1 — ANAPHORA AND REFRAIN
Angelou builds the poem's power through anaphora — the repetition of 'I rise' and 'Still I rise' at the end of multiple stanzas creates a cumulative force that mirrors the unstoppable nature of the speaker's resilience. Each repetition is not mere redundancy but an escalation: the phrase gathers emotional weight with each use, moving from quiet assertion to thundering defiance. By the final stanza, the triple 'I rise / I rise / I rise' achieves an almost incantatory power, as if the words themselves are performing the act of rising.
The rhetorical questions — 'Does my sassiness upset you?', 'Does my sexiness upset you?' — use anaphora in a different register, directly addressing and taunting the oppressor. These questions are not seeking answers but asserting the speaker's right to be confident, sexual, and proud in a society that wants to suppress Black women. The repeated 'you' makes the oppressor present in the poem, transforming it into a confrontation rather than a monologue. Angelou does not speak about her oppressors — she speaks to them, forcing them to hear her.
Key Words
RAD — PROGRESS
The poem enacts an absolute, triumphant progression from oppression to liberation. The speaker begins by acknowledging the reality of historical suffering — 'You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies' — but refuses to be defined by it. Each stanza rises higher: from surviving lies to surviving hatred to claiming joy, sexuality, and pride. The progression is both personal and collective — the 'I' expands in the final stanzas to encompass centuries of Black resilience, 'the dream and the hope of the slave'. The poem's trajectory is relentlessly upward, allowing no setback or retreat.
Key Words
Technique 2 — NATURAL IMAGERY OF RISING
Angelou compares her resilience to irresistible natural forces: she rises 'like dust', 'like air', with the 'certainty of tides' and 'the hopes of spring'. This natural imagery suggests that the speaker's defiance is not a choice but a fundamental law of nature — as inevitable and unstoppable as the sunrise. By aligning herself with natural forces, Angelou implies that oppression is the unnatural state, and liberation is simply the restoration of the natural order.
The imagery also carries specifically racial and historical resonance. 'I rise' echoes the language of resurrection — the rising of the dead, the rising of the oppressed, the rising of a people from slavery to freedom. The 'dust' from which the speaker rises evokes both the biblical creation of humanity from dust and the ashes of destruction — Angelou transforms the raw material of suffering into the fuel for renewal. The natural imagery is thus both personal and archetypal, connecting the speaker's individual experience to the oldest stories of human endurance.
Key Words
Context (AO3)
THE AFRICAN AMERICAN EXPERIENCE
Angelou was an African American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist who worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. 'Still I Rise' channels centuries of Black American experience — from slavery to segregation to the ongoing struggle for equality. The poem's 'I' is simultaneously personal and historical, speaking for the millions who endured systemic racism and refused to be broken by it.
BLACK WOMEN'S EMPOWERMENT
Angelou writes specifically as a Black woman, claiming both racial and gendered pride. The lines about 'sassiness', 'sexiness', and 'haughtiness' challenge the double oppression of being both Black and female in America. Angelou insists on her right to be confident, sensual, and joyful — qualities that a racist, patriarchal society sought to deny Black women. The poem is an act of self-definition against centuries of imposed identity.
Key Words
WOW — AUDRE LORDE — SELF-CARE AS POLITICAL WARFARE
Audre Lorde, the Black feminist poet and theorist, wrote that 'caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.' Angelou's poem embodies this principle: the speaker's joy, confidence, and sensuality are not merely personal qualities but political acts of resistance against a system designed to crush Black women's spirits. When Angelou writes 'I dance like I've got diamonds / At the meeting of my thighs', she is claiming pleasure and self-love in a society that has historically treated Black women's bodies as property. The poem argues that defiance is not only found in marches and protests but in the daily refusal to be diminished — in laughter, in pride, in the simple, radical act of declaring 'I rise'. This transforms personal resilience into a form of collective revolutionary action.
Key Words