“Still I Rise” is the banner poem in Maya Angelou’s third collection of poetry, titled And Still I Rise (1978). The 43-line poem features a Black female speaker, who addresses an unspecified “you” with a defiantly confrontational tone. Although this “you” could be understood as the reader, it more likely addresses the patriarchal and racist American society of the mid to late twentieth century. Throughout the poem’s first seven stanzas, the speaker confronts “you” with a series of declarations and rhetorical questions. The speaker’s address at once acknowledges and rejects a range of limiting expectations American society places on Black women. In the final two stanzas, the speaker shifts her focus from “you” to her own sense of self-expansion and self-liberation. As she makes this shift, she disrupts the structure of her previous stanza form. Whereas the first seven stanzas are all quatrains with a strict ABCB rhyme scheme, the final stanzas shift to an AABB rhyme scheme. The final stanzas also feature repeated insertions of the defiant and celebratory phrase, “I rise.” These insertions break up the traditional quatrain form, symbolizing the speaker’s attempt to break away from oppressive traditions and transcend society’s limiting expectations.

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