Still I Rise: Historical & Literary Context

Black Feminism

The U.S. Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s broadly aimed to end many forms of institutionalized discrimination against Black people. In the wake of that movement, there arose a more focused effort to think about the unique forms of discrimination experienced by Black women specifically. Black women intellectuals and activists developed a philosophical paradigm now known as “Black feminism.” This paradigm emphasizes the inherent value of Black women and the urgent need for specifically Black female liberation. Perhaps the first formal statement of Black feminism appeared in 1977, when a group known as the Combahee River Collective published a statement about their work. In that statement, the Collective emphasized the difficulty of “separat[ing] race from class from sex oppression.” These three aspects of oppression—race, class, and sex—must be considered together, “because in our lives they are most often experienced simultaneously.” Angelou first published “Still I Rise” in 1978, which places the poem in conversation with the Collective’s landmark statement. That said, Angelou’s work also looks back to the proto-feminist writing of figures like Zora Neale Hurston. For instance, Hurston’s 1937 novel Their Eyes Were Watching God explored the unique struggles of a Black female protagonist as she comes of age.

African American Spirituals

Though Maya Angelou’s poetry exists in written form, her most famous poems are perhaps best remembered from spellbinding performances she herself gave of them. This is certainly the case for “On the Pulse of Morning,” which Angelou debuted in her powerful reading of the poem on live television, during President Bill Clinton’s 1993 inauguration ceremony. The performative aspects of Angelou’s poetry indicate a link to oral tradition, and particularly to the tradition of African American spirituals. Spirituals belong to a Black musical tradition that emerged during the time of slavery, and which featured songs that described the hardships of life as a plantation slave. Despite the difficult subject matter of these songs, the point of singing them was to help gather the strength to survive. This tradition evolved into the genre we now identify as “the blues.” Like many spirituals, Angelou’s poems frequently discuss matters of hardship and oppression, but usually with an overarching message of survival. The speaker of “Still I Rise” acknowledges society’s expectation that she should remain bound to “a past that’s rooted in pain” (line 31). However, she defiantly rejects this expectation, celebrating her own strength and survival in the face of hardship.

Previous section About Maya Angelou Next section Related Works on SparkNotes