Still I Rise, By Maya Angelou

Throughout her life, Maya Angelou was ridiculed for the color of her skin and was treated differently because of it. So many racist people lived in her town and used her and the black community as a doormat. African Americans were restricted to certain things and, “did not have the same rights and privileges as whites” (Agins 8). Racism was a big problem in Maya Angelou’s childhood, especially when she was eight. When Angelou was eight she helped her grandmother run the main store in Stamps. Momma rented out the house on the lot of her store to a poor white family. The girls would come by the store and demand things from Momma and Maya and would have to be addressed as “Miz”. One day when they went to walk up the steps they saw Momma standing on the porch with arms crossed and slippers on and started imitating her. Maya was infuriated and wanted to hurt the girls but Momma taught Maya to let it roll off her back, seeing as though racism would be a continuous thing throughout her life (Angelou 29-32). Maya felt that, “Being a product (is ‘victim’ a better word?) of southern Negro upbringing, I decided that I ‘would understand it all better by-and-by’” (Angelou 276). Angelou found it easier to be brought up through a segregated area where she was taunted and walked all over just for being black daily rather than finding it out later in life.

For one thing, not only is Maya a girl, but she is an African American as well. This means there is the added factor of racism on top of society’s expectations for her. These two combined lead Maya to have very little self-esteem and confidence in herself. From a young age, she believed she was ugly, comparing herself to her brother Bailey saying, “When I was described by our playmates as being shit color, he was lauded for his velvet black skin” (22). She is constantly teased for her appearance because of her skin color, and believes the horrible things people say about her. Angelou shows us that the pressure from society to be attractive and beautiful suffocates her, and that she is under the belief that she is ugly for the majority of her childhood. This, along with her parents leaving her and her brother when they were only three and four respectively, makes Maya feel unwanted. Incidentally, it does not help when she notices a pattern for the heroes in the books she reads. Maya praises an author named Horatio Alger, claiming he was “the greatest writer in the world. His heroes were always good, always won, and were always boys” (75). Maya notices that heroes were always depicted as boys, and it makes her wish she had been born a boy as well. The lack of representation of female heroes makes her, and possibly many other little girls, feel as if there is no possible way they would achieve

“Still I Rise” was written by Maya Angelou, who is an African-American poet. A majority of her poems are written on slavery and life as a African- American woman. “Still I Rise” is one of the many well known. She discusses how she is treated differently and refers to her ancestry and relates to events they went through during the time of slavery and the events she continues to go through during her time period of life.

Maya Angelou, an African-American woman, wrote the poem, “Still I Rise,” in 1978 when racism was still prominent. Maya Angelou was reaching out to a racist community to prove oppression will not bring her down. Angelou brings up topics of what she and every other African-American person has to endure when living in their communities, and how they feel. She also brings up topics of oppression and marginalization throughout this speech to state that she will continue to rise up above it. Maya Angelou utilizes rhetorical questions, hateful diction, as well as, similes and metaphors to prove to others that she, and other African-American’s will rise against the racism and oppression they face.

The ballad still I rise is composed by Maya Angelou; an African American writer, instructor and social liberties extremist. The ballad's strict importance is a snide reaction towards the general population who look down on the speaker. To the storyteller, the sonnet figuratively depicts her quality to dependably survive the fight against individuals' feedback of her and her predecessors. All around, this ballad conveys the message of the human's fantastic quality and capacity to defeat hurt. In any case, the fundamental and most essential message this ballad gives is the storyteller's quality to counter against separation of races and sexual orientation; which offers seek after other people who experience the ill effects of a similar difficulty.

Maya Angelo uses poetic devices such as similes, metaphors and repetition to show her audience about how she has overcome adversity in her life through demonstrating a strong, confidence and defiant attitude to inspire others to keep their head up not just for blacks after the time period of the civil rights movement but a message to all that you “rise” despite the situation you are stuck in.

Still I Rise is a poem written by Maya Angelou. Through this poem, Angelou has used third person which allows the audience to relate to the social issue that she is introducing. Maya Angelou structured this poem in a certain way to be able to portray how much this issue meant to her emotionally and historically. The aim of this poem is to make audiences throughout the whole world aware of racism and discrimination. Maya wrote this piece to show that no matter how many times white people discriminate against blacks that they will always find the positives in everything while staying strong and

Maya struggles to keep the freedom she feels as child and the responsibilities she has to obey as an adult. Furthermore, Maya uses metaphors to fully explain the problems that arise when growing up and the reader is able to relate to her conflicts. For example, Maya compares her youth as the “beauty of full freedom” to the “murderous pressure of adult conformity” (267). Maya describes her youth as beautiful because she is innocent and is free. In contrast, Maya describes her adulthood as a “murderous pressure” to fully convey to the reader the misery she feels letting go of her freedom and joining social conformity. Maya looses her innocence at a young age and she connects her innocence to freedom so that the reader is able to realize just how much of her youth Maya has lost. The shift in Maya’s writing causes the reader to feel sadness for Maya because she has let go of her adolescence. For instance, Maya compares herself to a “mote” that is “imprisoned” and is “pushed and pulled” but can never fall “free into tempting darkness” (110). Maya uses the mote to describe her imprisonment she feels in Stamps and her hunger for freedom. Additionally, Maya specifically labels her freedom as “tempting darkness” so that the reader can understand that her freedom is unattainable and unapproachable. Consequently, Maya’s audience is able to feel sympathy and can relate to Maya’s premature

Foul words are used to expressed people’s emotions toward another person all the time. In “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou the speaker remains assertive even when awful words are thrown her way every day.The theme of not letting people knock you down in Maya Angelou’s poem “Still I Rise” is expressed through repetition, similes, and diction.

Aniece Moore Scloesser 6th Poem Essay It’s hard to rise above all things that seem to tug and pull a person down. Is it possible for someone to rise with all the heavy weights on their shoulders full of hate, misunderstanding and ignorance? The answer is yes, A poem by Maya Angelou called “Still I rise” proves to readers and people that a person can rise with heavy weights on their shoulders the poem “Still I rise” by Maya Angelou is a poem about how she still rises through the struggles of being a woman but also a black woman. She describes how she rises through the hate, misunderstanding including ignorance using metaphors.

How does Maya Angelou provoke the audience to feel the sense of equality? Maya Angelou captures the audience’s attention through her persuasive piece ‘Still I Rise’ which evidently addresses her implicit response to oppression and mistreatment, African- American women suffered for decades. This poem focuses on the conformity of Angelou to the oppressors on the behalf of all the black women and the loss of their self-respect and dignity in the process.

Maya Angelou and the Theme of Racism Poems provide a new insight and portray many meanings. Maya Angelou, born in 1928, was a highly achieved, versatile woman whom is an author, poet, dancer, and actress. In her poems and in life, racism is integrated. This is seen in Angelou’s familial and other life experiences, the literary devices seen in “Still I Rise,” and the extension of the metaphor in “Caged Bird.” Maya Angelou was born in St. Louis, MO and soon later moved to a segregated part of AK, known as Stamps.

During the time period poems “I , Too” by Langston Hughes and Still I Rise by Maya Angelou were written, African Americans were going through a difficult time. Countless laws were geared towards African American such as the Jim Crow Laws. Regulations and strict codes incorporated them through the multiple events which caused conflicts within the people of that time. These conflicts made it harder for African Americans to live just their normal everyday lives. They had started to then rethink every decision or choice they formed. African Americans who express their feelings and opinions about the event occurring during the time period write both poems. The poems are expressed where the writer is trying to connect to the reader to truly obtain

Maya reflects the hardships that she experienced in her life into her writing. She uses metaphors and imagery to explain the oppression that she has come into contact with. In her poem Still I rise she uses lines like “Shoulders falling down like teardrops,/Weakened by my soulful cries?” (15,16) to explain how she was made to feel ashamed and distraught by the words and actions of the people in her life. The line “You may kill me with your

It uses nature to describe beautiful things and emotion to show how we respond to the events we see and feel. There is mystery in poetry so it inspires the reader to dig deeper and use their imagination and to feel and see from the heart.. We can reap by seeing the beauty in poetry. In this poem, the reader felt the anguish that Maya felt, her frustration, and her despair. The reader had an overlook into the emotions that the African Americans felt during their painful history. After all, a history book can tell you the information, but poetry tells you the emotions, of these real people not just a broadened group, Even though the scales of equality are slightly equal, the prejudice some hold against other races, women and minorities still exist in today’s biased society. The themes and perspectives in Maya Angelou’s poem equality remain timeless throughout generations, and still resonate with today’s cohort, because Racial discrimination is not a ongoing problem and still has not been