Still I Rise Summary by Maya Angelou

The fifth stanza again asks a pair of pointed questions, like the second stanza. Slowly, the reader sees a pattern emerging in the structure of the poem. Angelou asks whether her pride offends her detractors. Once again, Angelou follows up her questions with a humorous image – this time of gold mines dug up in her own backyard. Like before, Angelou puts forward an image of economic stability in front of white men who have been paying black women low wages, and confining them to long hours of monotonous, unskilled labour.

The sixth stanza outlines the various methods adopted by Angelou’s oppressors to bring her down – whether it is their harsh words, their cruel looks, or their hatred for black women. In addition, Angelou again asserts that she and her sisterhood of African-American women will rise – this time around, like air that rises through convectional currents.

The seventh stanza resembles the second and the fifth stanzas. Angelou asks her “sexiness” is a nasty surprise for her detractors, and whether it upsets them. It is well-known that such an image of Angelou did persist in the typical American mindset, her having worked as a nightclub dancer, and as a theatre actress. Returning to the poem, Angelou follows up her questions with an audacious image, as expected – of “diamonds at the meeting of (her) thighs.”

The final, longer paragraph consists of Angelou giving readers an introduction to her identity. Angelou says she is a black ocean, holding in all the “shame” and “pain” of her race and her gender within her tide. However, all is not black in her world. She is able to emerge out of dark nights into the brightness of day, carrying within her the legacy of her ancestors, and their hope of finding a new life in America when they arrived in that country as slaves. Seven out of the fifteen lines of this last stanza consist of the two pivotal words of the poem as a whole: “I rise.” Thus, right till the end, Angelou maintains her tone of proud defiance, while speaking up for the rights of African-American women all over the United States of her time.

 

Keywords – Still I Rise Summary (3.6)

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6 comments

  1. I love the summary and I appreciate the work u people are doing.i like the summary and I wish to read more from you.

  2. Really a very nice summary. I really appreciate yor efforts to enrich we readers and thakful to you. Alsu would like to visit you again and again

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