Still I Rise By Maya Angelou Essay

“We may encounter many defeats but we must not be defeated.”-Maya Angelou (“brainyquote.com”) Angelou had many other talents before she became a poet and civil rights activist. Angelou was a country music lover, wrote cookbooks, and guest starred on Sesame Street. After Angelou became older in age, she began to engage in more serious activities such as marching with Martin Luther King Jr.(poets.org) Angelou was inspired by the way blacks were being treated so she decided to put it all on paper. The civil rights movement is what inspired Angelou to become a poet. As a result of her poetry, new experiences were offered to Angelou such as acting and becoming an author of many books (“bio.com”)

The author’s story begins on April 4th,1928 when Marguerite Annie Johnson, now known as Maya Angelou, was born in St.Louis, Missouri to Bailey Johnson and Vivian

When asked by Martin Luther King Jr., Angelou’s attended the march and there she was heavily influenced by the civil rights movement. In the poem, “Still I rise,” Angelou uses a theme where she talks about blacks being judged by white oppressors and how she started to speak up for them. Although, many poets have favorite poetic devices such as alliteration or metaphors, Angelou is the type of writer to reuse metaphors, similes, and repetition. A metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object without using like or as. An example of a metaphor is “You may cut me with your eyes.” This is because eyes can’t physically cut someone. Similes are figures of speech involving the comparison of one thing with another using like and as. One example of a simile used by Angelou is “but still, like dust, i'll rise.” Repetition is the action of repeating something that has already been said or written. An example of repetition is “I rise”(“enotes.com”). Angelou repeatedly uses “I rise” in almost every stanza of the