by Maya Angelou
Angelou's third poetry collection joins bodily confidence and resistance to poems of hurt, labor, family, and memory.
And Still I Rise is Maya Angelou's 1978 collection of thirty-two poems. It includes Still I Rise and Phenomenal Woman, alongside poems about love, violence, work, childhood, and aging. Three sections give the volume its shape. Its confident declarations share space with difficult relationships and remembered pain, so the whole book offers more than the celebratory voice of its best-known poems.
Phenomenal Woman makes bodily presence a source of confidence. The speaker names ordinary movements and features, then repeats her declaration of womanhood. The poem moves from other people's puzzled responses toward her own explanation of what makes her attractive.
California Prodigal uses a different vocabulary and setting. Old buildings and ancestral portraits surround an active present-day figure. Flowers and sunlight give the landscape movement while the painted ancestors remain fixed. The poem sets inherited surroundings against the life taking place within them.
Kin turns toward a brother and shared childhood. The speaker recalls walks, private conversation, and Arkansas evenings after describing separation and distress. Its address moves between family memory and uncertainty about the brother's experience. That uncertainty remains even when remembered laughter returns.
Part One, Touch Me, Life, Not Softly, contains eight poems, including A Kind of Love, Some Say, Phenomenal Woman, and Men. Part Two, Traveling, contains fifteen, including California Prodigal, Woman Work, and Kin.
Part Three, And Still I Rise, contains nine poems. It begins with Still I Rise and ends with Thank You, Lord. The individual poem's title omits the opening And used in the collection's title.
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
I was your sister.
The full contents place confident declarations beside hurt, family memory, and work. Reading the collection broadens the view offered by a single frequently quoted poem.
A refrain, a short list, and an address to a brother produce different effects. The selected readings make those differences easy to compare.
In Kin, remembered walks and fireflies give childhood a place and a texture. California Prodigal similarly develops its argument through buildings, pictures, and plants.
The speaker answers attempts to humiliate or silence her with repeated assertions of survival. Comparisons with dust, air, and tides make that survival seem inevitable. The ending connects her voice to ancestors and the history of slavery.
A woman answers questions about her attractiveness by naming her body, movement, and self-possession. Each stanza returns to a declaration she makes for herself. The repeated answer refuses to let the observers' confusion define her.
An opening question compares physical blows, asking whether the victim's body can distinguish their source. The poem examines the confusion of violence with love. Its bruises and shock give a concrete basis to that distinction.
This brief poem lists clothes, music, a dance, a drink, and a prospective partner. Short rhyming phrases give the list a quick pace. Very little explanation separates the details of a social evening.
An old California property carries traces of its past in walls, vines, and portraits. Against that stillness, a living figure insists on activity and generosity. Flowers and sunlight complete the contrast between inherited images and present life.
Addressed to Bailey, the poem links a sister and brother through blood, separation, and remembered childhood. Private conversations and fireflies in Arkansas give the shared past specific forms. The speaker's affection does not resolve every uncertainty about her brother.
1978
Random House publishes And Still I Rise, Angelou's third collection of poetry.
1994
The Complete Collected Poems of Maya Angelou gathers the poems with her other poetry collections.
2015
The Complete Poetry preserves And Still I Rise as a distinct collection within a larger volume, retaining its three sections.
Angelou's first autobiography gives a sustained account of childhood, family, and Arkansas, subjects that also appear in the poetry.
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The second memoir develops work, relationships, and early parenthood through narrative scenes rather than separate lyric voices.
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Hughes's earlier collection offers another approach to the rhythms of spoken language and Black musical traditions in poetry.
Read our takeAnd Still I Rise is the title of Angelou's 1978 poetry collection. Still I Rise, without the opening And, is a poem in its third section.
The original collection contains thirty-two poems: eight in Touch Me, Life, Not Softly, fifteen in Traveling, and nine in And Still I Rise.
Yes. Phenomenal Woman appears in the first section. Its repeated declaration of womanhood is distinct from the refrain in Still I Rise.
No. The poem Caged Bird belongs to Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?, a later poetry collection. It can appear alongside these poems in larger collected editions.
The poems include family memories, but a poetic speaker should not automatically be treated as a factual account of the author's life. The book contains different voices, situations, and forms.
The Random House hardcover with ISBN 9780394502526 identifies And Still I Rise itself. Larger collected editions include additional books and therefore have different contents and page counts.
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View authorThe sources below include the primary text, editions, scholarship, archival materials, and other records that informed this page. They document And Still I Rise, its publication, and its place in literary history.
The primary text represented by this page, used for descriptions of the work’s contents and for any quoted passages shown here.
ISBN and publication details; complete texts of Still I Rise, A Kind of Love, Some Say, and Country Lover.
Scanned publisher contents establish the thirty-two poems and three sections, preserved within the 2015 collected volume. The same contents place Caged Bird in Shaker, Why Don't You Sing?.
Authorized complete poem and its credit to the 1978 collection and 1994 collected edition.
Authorized complete poem for the landscape reading.
Authorized complete poem, dedication, and verified quotation.
Archival drafts and publication context for the collection.
The primary text is the baseline reference for every book page. Additional references document publication history, interpretation, and historical context where that evidence is available.
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