Poem Mechanics Summary
First published in 1978, the poem details the hopes of the speaker to abolish prejudices and injustice. It speaks to the struggle of the African American community. Major themes throughout the poem include courage, pride, and injustice. The speaker is proud of her identity and openly challenges those who want to hold her down. Rather than giving in to societal standards, Angelou illustrates a resilient and defiant spirit. Embodying the African American experience and feminism, she speaks to the harmful past of ancestors with the chains of slavery.
Speaking from the perspective of her own and similar to that of many other African Americans, the autobiographical poem can be assumed that the setting is America in the 1960s following the era of segregation and discrimination as based on Angelou's life. It can also be classified as political poetry, feminist poetry, and revolutionary African American poetry. The poem is broken into nine total stanzas. The first seven are quatrains, the eighth stanza is made of six lines, and the final stanza is composed of eight lines. The rhyme scheme follows ABCB for the first seven stanzas, which tightly links the stanza. The eighth stanza follows a ABABCC rhyme scheme and the final stanza follows a ABABCCBBB rhyme. The underlying conflict intertwined throughout the poem lies between the speaker herself and the people of society who have oppressed her and her community in the past, as well as are offended by her success and achievements. The speaker foreshadows her rise to equality and continued efforts of the civil rights and feminist movements.