Still I rise *Comparing herself to power*ful forces of nature *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.*
*Leaving behind nights of terror and fear*
I rise*
*Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear*
I rise*
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,*
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.*
I rise*
I rise*
I rise Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom? *
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells *
Pumping in my living room. Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides, *
Just like hopes springing high, *
Still I'll rise. *I. In stanza one, Maya Angelou hints at her relationship with history and the body's relationship with the earth. With an African American background, she knows the importance and cruel irony of history. "His Story" is usually told from an European angle. She also correlates how the body can be put and driven into the ground, but eventually it decomposes and humans turn into earth, like soil and dust. Maya Angelou tells how she is above lies and oppression, and 'like dust, I'll rise.'
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II. Maya Angelou goes on to ask a rhetorical question to the reader. Her attitude as a confident, sassy, African American woman is out of the norm for society. A woman, let alone an African woman who has confidence in herself was a taboo idea. She asks the reader if that upsets them, which at the time, probably did. She also mentions how she carries herself, portraying it to the world as though she is rich, which for Maya Angelou she wasn't rich growing up. This just explains how one can act confident and be proud of themselves even though they are not rich or perfect. *
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III. In the third stanza Maya correlates her attitude with the certainty of nature. She explains how nature and people's hopes are certain facts that will never end. The sun will...