Resource Pack for: Still I Rise, poem by Maya Angelou
Created by Hannah Nash
Context
Maya Angelou was an American writer who wrote autobiographies, essays and poetry. She was very active in the black civil rights movement during the 1960s and received widespread recognition in her life-time for her writing and her influential contribution to social justice.
Her poem ‘Still I Rise’ uses vivid imagery to express the powerful and determined resilience of the poem’s speaker, and the African-American people as a group, in the face of relentless oppression and discrimination. Published in 1978, ‘Still I Rise’ is one of Angelou’s best-loved poems and continues to inspire and uplift people from all walks of life in times of struggle, hardship or challenges of any kind. Nelson Mandela read her poem ‘Still I Rise’ at his presidential inauguration in 1994. The poem is a declaration of the tenacity of the human spirit to rise above all hatred and oppression.