INTRODUCTION
Maya Angelou (1928–2014) was a writer and poet who had a remarkably varied career. She was born in St. Louis and grew up in Missouri and Arkansas. She struggled to overcome difficult circumstances in the 1930s and 1940s, before becoming an aspiring poet in the 1950s. She joined the civil rights movement and worked with Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and also spent time overseas in the Middle East and Africa and during the 1960s. She is perhaps best known for her first autobiographical work, a searing memoir: I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings (1969). Later she became a college professor and renowned public intellectual who authored several books. Angelou delivered an inaugural poem for President Bill Clinton in 1993. Angelou wrote “Still I Rise” in the 1970s while living in Oakland, California. It soon became an anthem for many people. Nelson Mandela read the poem while in prison in South Africa and later recited it when he was inaugurated as the country’s president in 1994. Serena Williams also famously invoked the poem and Angelou’s influence during critical moments in her groundbreaking tennis career. Angelou died in 2014.
Still I Rise
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.
Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
’Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.
Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I’ll rise.
Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
Weakened by my soulful cries?
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.
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.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?
Out of the huts of history’s shame
I rise
Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
I rise
I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise.