Point of View

The poem “homage to my hips” is told from the first-person perspective of an African American woman who refers to her hips using the third-person pronoun “they.” The first-person pronoun “i” does not appear until closer to the end of the poem. This focuses the reader’s attention on the speaker through the context of her hips. Though it is not explicitly stated in the poem that the speaker is African American, the use of the word “enslaved” as well as reading this poem in the context of the collection or Clifton’s body of work as a whole clarifies the speaker’s race. As such, the speaker implicitly deals with forces of oppression that attempt to subjugate her (such as racism and sexism) by finding freedom in her own body. She praises her large hips as beautiful and powerful, and personifies them as their...