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Maya AngelouA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
The speaker of the poem relates a message of survival and resilience in the face of ongoing and historical trauma and oppression, frequently alluding to the historical oppression that Black Americans have faced. She opens the poem by directly addressing this legacy: “[y]ou may write me down in history / With your bitter twisted lies” (Lines 1-2). The speaker spends the rest of the poem countering this biased history by describing their resilience and the survival of Black American culture as a whole. They insist on their ability to overcome by repeating the phrase “I’ll rise” throughout the poem. Their use of the word emphasizes the ongoing nature of her survival. Even in the face of these incidents, they will continue to survive.
The ability to overcome is most clearly observable in the last two stanzas of the poem where the speaker moves “[o]ut of the huts of history’s shame” (Line 29) and “[u]p from a past that’s rooted in pain” (Line 31). In doing so, the speaker is “[l]eaving behind the nights of terror and fear” (Line 35) associated with slavery, lynching, and other acts of racial violence. In the last stanza, the speaker uses the story of their personal survival to represent a collective resilience.
By Maya Angelou
A Brave And Startling Truth
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All God's Children Need Traveling Shoes
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A Song Flung Up to Heaven
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Caged Bird
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Gather Together in My Name
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I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings
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Letter to My Daughter
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Mom & Me & Mom
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Mother, A Cradle to Hold Me
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On the Pulse of Morning
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Phenomenal Woman
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The Heart of a Woman
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The Lesson
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