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Essay on And Still I Rise, By Maya Angelou
Maya Angelou, an important poet and autobiographer, has brought the experience of African-American women and a message of strength and love to popular American literature.
"AND STILL I RISE” is among her masterpiece. Maya Angelou, in having created this poem, has assured herself a prominent place in American literature. Moreover, She has expanded the scope of the typical one-volume book about the self, creating a saga that covers the years 1941 to 1965--from the beginnings of the Second World War to the days preceding the assassination of Malcolm X. She guides the reader through a quarter of a century of American and African American history, revealed through the point of view of a strong and affectionate black woman. By opening up the edges of her narrative, Maya Angelou, like no one before her, transcends the autobiographical tradition, enriching it with contemporary experience and female sensibility.
Maya Angelou, the author of five highly acclaimed works of lasting literary quality, has done it again. She sings with the evocative and sometimes provocative cadence of the blues master. In her world, language serves content. Characteristic depth of meaning blossoms and pollinates her work. She is a vintage craftswoman plying her artistic tools with polished economy and confidence.
Like the blues player she is, her lyrics bubble and brim over. She paces us through her snapshots of the Afro-American community, its women and their problems, which become ours as well; through love and its triumphs and defeats; and through shared personal experiences and outlooks that draw you further out of yourself and into her world. This is the power and the magic of And Still I Rise.
It is a book of instructiveness, love, joy, pain, but always shared optimism. And in a country with so many anti-humans, self-negating values................
