Still I Rise

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1977

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Themes

Survival and Resilience

The speaker of the poem relates a message of survival and resilience in the face of ongoing and historical trauma and oppression, frequently alluding to the historical oppression that Black Americans have faced. She opens the poem by directly addressing this legacy: “[y]ou may write me down in history / With your bitter twisted lies” (Lines 1-2). The speaker spends the rest of the poem countering this biased history by describing their resilience and the survival of Black American culture as a whole. They insist on their ability to overcome by repeating the phrase “I’ll rise” throughout the poem. Their use of the word emphasizes the ongoing nature of her survival. Even in the face of these incidents, they will continue to survive.

The ability to overcome is most clearly observable in the last two stanzas of the poem where the speaker moves “[o]ut of the huts of history’s shame” (Line 29) and “[u]p from a past that’s rooted in pain” (Line 31). In doing so, the speaker is “[l]eaving behind the nights of terror and fear” (Line 35) associated with slavery, lynching, and other acts of racial violence. In the last stanza, the speaker uses the story of their personal survival to represent a collective resilience. As the “dream and the hope of the slave” (Line 40), they are “[b]ringing the gifts that [their] ancestors gave” to the poetry to illustrate the resilience of Black Americans.

Black Pride

The poem expresses the speaker’s pride in their Blackness. The speaker reclaims the traits that others often use to criticize; they are proud of their “sassiness” (Line 5), “haughtiness” (Line 17), and “sexiness” (Line 25). This pride contrasts with the expectation that they should have “[b]owed [their] head and lowered [their] eyes” with their “[s]houlders falling down like teardrops” (Lines 13, 14). Throughout the poem, the speaker rejects the expectation that society would “want to see [them] broken” (Line 13). Instead, the speaker highlights how the way they move contrasts with these expectations. They walk, dance, and laugh as if they had valuable material objects because they values their Blackness more than if they actually possessed these material riches.

Identity

The speaker’s identity as a Black person is central to the poem. The extensive use of the first person pronoun “I” emphasizes the centrality of their sense of self. The speaker opens the poem by rejecting the identity created by others, saying that while they “may write me down in history” (Line 1), these are “bitter, twisted lies” (Line 2). The rest of the poem involves the speaker’s declaration of how they will rise “[w]ith the certainty of tides” (Line 10). As an individual, their identity will overcome these attempts at oppression.

The sixth stanza makes the shift to collective identity more explicit in the description of the cultural violence that Black Americans must face. While society “may shoot” (Line 21), “cut” (Line 22), or “kill” (Line 23) Black individuals, Black people will still continue and thrive. The speaker’s closing image emphasizes this collective identity as they identify with the “gifts” (Line 34) of their ancestors and the “dream and the hope of the slave” (Line 40). Here, the speaker ties the individual identity of the speaker with the collective experience of Black Americans.