Maya Angelou Still I Rise Analysis

There is a woman who breathed the spirit of what it means to jump hurdles, leap fences, and penetrate the walls built on unstable ground. A woman who secreets the title of phenomenal woman and placed the weight of the world on her back so that no one could ever tell her that her strength was a made up reality. There are few people of this generation that can inspire on a platform that was never built for their voice, even fewer in the generation of the late Maya Angelou who had more than just a few let her know that her voice was not wanted. I suppose though, you could say that you can never dampen the light of someone who had to light the way for herself since the day she was born. Although some may say that memorials are only made for those

Maya Angelou does not only deserve a memorial but has earned one for her breathtaking works, numerous awards, and prodigious bouts of strength shown throughout the entirety of her life. Starting with Angelou’s most famous works in 1978 with Still I Rise (Anirudh 10) to her final publishised poem in 2013, His Day is Done (Dr. Maya Angelou 1) we see the evolution of her work and the noticeable stability of purpose she makes in each one. Like in her most well known poem, Still I Rise, Angelou starts by saying, “You may write me down in history With you bitter, twisted lies...But still, like dust, I’ll rise.” The power behind words like these show a solitude and confidence in herself that she has always had and that would follow her throughout all of her work. This trend of confidence as a statement is also prevalent in another famous piece of hers

The struggle in Angelou’s life started when she was young. At the age of 8 Angelou was left mute for several years after a traumatic rape that also resulted in the murder of her rapist (Britannica 2). Though fastforwarding to 1940, Angelou moved to San Francisco with her mother working a variety of odd jobs until she became a professional dancer and also changing her name (Britannica 3). Work till this point of her life was all she knew and proceeded to continue this trend in order to achieve her dreams. Another look into her future Angelou now working as a professor of an American studies at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina (Britannica 6). At this point in her life Angelou became known as Dr. Angelou to the public in spite of her lack of a college education. These small bouts of respect she was given later in her life was what she earned from the years of abuse she had to fight through, reiterating the skill and talent that she showed in her lifetime. As a society we can agree that a memorial is never a reward givin to those deserving. It cannot be unsaid that we’ve made mistakes in the past but I feel that a good place to start in the right direction is with the late Dr. Maya Angelou. Not only in her lifetime has she completed numerous and amazing pieces of work but has received