Previous Next

Themes are the fundamental and often universal ideas explored in a literary work.

The Resilience of Black Women

The speaker of “Still I Rise” is a Black woman who powerfully expresses her strength and resilience in the face of an oppressive, racist society. The theme of resilience runs like a thread through all nine of the poem’s stanzas. In some cases, the resilience she evokes applies to Black Americans in general. For instance, in the first stanza, the speaker defies attempts on the part of dominant, white society to misrepresent Black history. Later, in the sixth stanza, she refuses to let racist words, glances, and actions negatively impact her sense of self-worth. Finally, she ends the poem by situating her contemporary experience in a longer history of Black resilience in the face of slavery and disenfranchisement (stanzas 8–9). In other cases, however, the speaker’s emphasis on resilience relates to Black American women in particular. In stanzas 2–5, for instance, she insists on her right to carry herself with a sense of pride, expressed through an upright posture and a confident stride. Later in the poem, she expresses the sense of personal empowerment she derives from her sexuality (stanzas 7–8). What unites each of these topics is a tone of defiance, which the speaker uses to express her own strength and resilience.

Defiance of Oppressive Social Expectations

A major theme of “Still I Rise” is the need to defy oppressive social expectations. This theme emerges through the speaker’s tone more than her actual words. Consider the opening lines, which initiate the speaker’s confrontational tone: “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies” (lines 1–2). Although the words plainly state a misdeed committed by this “you,” it’s the speaker’s use of the verb “may” that makes these opening lines so powerful. The use of “may” at once extends an invitation and anticipates a refusal, as if to say: “You can try all you want to harm me, but it won’t work.” Whereas the speaker’s words clearly the indict the “you” for their wrongdoings, it’s her tone that most clearly evokes the empowerment she derives from defying this “you.” A similar phenomenon occurs in the poem’s fourth stanza. There (lines 13–16), the speaker asks a series of rhetorical questions that simultaneously acknowledge and reject common stereotypes about how Black women should act:

     Did you want to see me broken?
     Bowed head and lowered eyes?
     Shoulders falling down like teardrops,
     Weakened by my soulful cries?

The speaker uses rhetorical questions to powerful and ironic effect, implicitly refusing to subscribe to the oppressive stereotype of Black women as weak and demure. Once again, the sense of defiance emerges primarily through the speaker’s tone.

The Power of Reclaiming History

At the opening and closing of the poem, the speaker references the importance of reclaiming one’s own history from the misrepresentations of dominant society. The speaker emphasizes the violence of misrepresentation in the first stanza when she says, “You may write me down in history / With your bitter, twisted lies” (lines 1–2). With these lines, the speaker references the adage that history is told by those who wield the most power. As a member of a marginalized and oppressed group, the speaker recognizes that the most prevalent version of her own community’s history is full of dehumanizing half-truths and harmful reductions. It is precisely these half-truths and reductions that dominant society uses to “trod [the speaker] in the very dirt” (line 3). In the poem’s final two stanzas, however, the speaker makes explicit references to Black American history in ways that actively recuperate it and use to develop a clearer sense of self (lines 29–32 and 39–40):

     Out of the huts of history’s shame
     I rise
     Up from a past that’s rooted in pain
     I rise
     . . . 
     Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
     I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

The speaker directly connects her own experience in the contemporary moment to the long history of slavery and Black disenfranchisement. From this history of her own people, the speaker derives a clear sense of identity that also gives her the strength necessary to survive ongoing oppression.

Previous section Setting Next section Motifs

Take a Study Break