The Speaker

"Still I Rise" features an unnamed, first-person speaker. Although not stated in the poem, line such as "Does my sassiness upset you?" (5) and "Does my sexiness upset you?" (25) suggest that the speaker is a woman. Furthermore, that these critiques have a fraught history of being applied to Black women also makes it likely that the speaker, like Angelou herself, is Black. Throughout the poem, the speaker is confident in her strength and refuses to succumb to the ways that Black women are oppressed by larger society. The speaker playfully exposes the hypocrisy and bigotry inherent to her opponent by basking in elements of her character typically considered threatening or problematic: sassiness, sexiness, haughtiness, etc. Her tone is confident and endearing as she celebrates herself; strengthened by the experiences that she survived, the speaker laughs like they have "gold mines / Diggin' in my own backyard" (19-20) and dances...