
Maya Angelou, who was a writer and Civil Rights activist, inspired thousands of people through her many different literature pieces. She’s most famous for her groundbreaking work I Know Why the Caged Bird Sing; due to the book’s huge success, Angelou was the first African-American woman who had a bestseller in American history (Biography Editors 1). The era she was raised in, she faced prejudice and severe discrimination when living in Arkansas (Biography Editors 1). With her difficult past, she wrote numerous novels, poems, and short stories about Civil Rights, which, ultimately, lead her to be the main influence on the Civil Rights Movement with Martin Luther King (Biography Editors 1). After MLK was assassinated, Angelou decided to dedicate her life to produce literature pieces that could provide comfort for women and African Americans (Biography Editors 1). One of her poems, Still I Rise, made a huge impact on the individuals who dealt with the racism that era pushed for. That poem has, not only, influenced individuals struggling with the racism during the 1960s, but the poem can help anyone from any generation due to Angelou’s diction, which proves to be the genius of this poem specifically. The tone in this poem depicts a guiding and comforting attitude. The phrases Angelou uses, like “still I rise”, to cause the effect of comfortableness. Throughout the poem, Angelou questions the reader with vague questions that most people can interpret individually. In this poem, Angelou’s diction of personal pronouns and a questionnaire system allows the reader to understand the impacts of Still I Rise throughout history by understanding the history, culture, and present troubles of the African Americans and women community. 

    Since Maya Angelou is well known for her Civil Right contributions, this poem obviously helps the African-Americans during that racist era (Biography Editors 1). In the beginning of the poem, on the first stanza, Angelou writes, 

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 rise (Angelou 1.1-4).

This first stanza is filled with dedication. This dedication is to never let someone control her life. Someone can threaten her life and her career, but she knows that she will overcome the lies and she will succeed. She does this empowering mechanism because she personally dealt with this before (Biography Editors 1). In her lifetime, she’s had to deal with racists and misogynists tell her horrible things that could destroy her morality. However, she knew that no one could damage that. She would always rise above the hatred. Since the entire first stanza is one sentence, the tone has a more confident meaning behind it. Almost like, she’s thought about it before and only needs one breath to complete it. According to Janet Jackson, who answers questions from an interviewer about Maya Angelou, Mrs. Jackson describes how impactful Angelou was, “Yet she transformed herself  into this incredible iconic figure- so iconic, in fact, that those words are a huge understatement. She shattered barriers not just for African Americans but for ALL women” (Janet 26). Here, Janet’s detailed quote proves how empowering Maya Angelou is as person and how strong her contributions to the culture of African Americans and women are. Angelou’s pieces of literature act as a protection layer for people who are dealing with the personal struggle Angelou went through.   The second stanza appears to be more aggressive with her writing.

Her second stanza is more verbally attacking the individual personally affecting Maya. She explains how successful she is, “Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells / Pumping in my living room” (Angelou). Owning oil wells is only occupied with people with money. So, when she says “I’ve got oil wells / Pumping in my living room” (Angelou), it implies that she’s successful. Since, in the 1960s-1770s most of the African Americans and women, in general, are not a success on their own. An African American woman, who've achieved her literary success on her own, acts a good role model for both women and African Americans. In today’s culture, there’s still a stereotype that women and cannot achieve great things on their own. Take the election of 2016 for example. Some people thought Hillary was not a selective leader because of her gender. Maya is an example of a female who broke that stereotype. Janet quotes, “There are no barriers of color or gender when it comes to Dr. Angelou” (Janet 26). Janet explains how Maya broke bars of gender and color by skyrocketing to the most successful African American woman author in American’s history by herself (Janet 26). Again, Janet acknowledges, “The poems of hers that impacted me the deepest are “Phenomenal Woman” which I recited in the film, and “Still I Rise. The empowering truth of them resonates with all women” (Janet 26). Here, Janet describes how empowering Still I Rise is. She highlights specifically how strongly connected she felt with this poem. She describes, in her interview, how she’s never felt so capacitate before in her entire life (Janet, 26). After the second stanza, there’s even more empowerment through her diction. 

Stanza eight is the most symbolic stanza discussing the black history and the struggles that culture faces. Angelou thinks, 

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 (Angelou). 

Clearly, this is about the black history and the difficulties they faced. The main situation she is talking about is slavery. When she writes, “Out of the huts of history’s shame” she talks about how no one is proud of slavery. No one, in this generation, and in the generation Maya was growing up in, was proud of slavery. It was a morality issue that people learned over the generations to hate. Another issue she could be talking about is the Civil Rights she grew in. The quote “huts of history’s shame” could be the discrimination the African American culture faced constantly during the 60s and 70s. With the comparison “I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, / Welling and swelling I bear in the tide” is a symbolic way of saying “I rise”. Scientifically, oceans always rise with their tide. So, she’s going to be continuously rising above prejudice she faces. Gail K. Dickinson, Ph.D., writes about Still I Rise, “[She] speaks to not only surviving, but succeeding, against all odds, against all prejudice, against all hopes. Our pathetic whine of not being understood pales in comparison to the struggles of centuries she portrays, as it should” (Dickson 6). This quote, explained by Dr. Dickinson, show Maya inspires people who are revolting through an emotional or physically situation. It does not have to be an adult; it can be a child who’s struggling. During the Civil Rights, there were many children who protested with MLK as they fight the white ruling. That’s another beauty of Angelou’s work: any age can relate to it. It’s language is simple and the common person could read it and understand the message she’s translating to the reader. 

Ultimately, it’s important to understand the history of people. Use them as a moderator to decide the future of yourself. These individuals have worked endlessly to provide the future for the future generations. Maya deserves to be more famous. She helped shape our present society and she needs more praise. Anyone who helps shape any future society for the better needs the praise that they earn. It’s important, especially for the younger generations, to understand history, through literature or textbook, because it’s the younger generations who will shape the future. 
