This empowering poem by award-winning author Maya Angelou explores sexism, oppression, resilience and racism. Using a call and response technique, Angelou tells the story of a black woman fighting for equality and the right to self-expression by speaking up. The confident, female voice condemns harassment and inequalities against people of colour and loudly recalls that ‘still she rises’. 

Maya Angelou experienced racial injustice herself and fought together with Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X in the Civil Rights Movement. Her works are suitable for interdisciplinary teaching projects on racism and segregation and can be related to current cases of police violence against people of colour in the US or the Black Lives Matter protest movement.

Poem · United States · 1978