Summer Annotates Angelou's "Still I Rise"

Everyone in the world is going to bed one night or another with fear or pain or loss or disappointment

And yet each of us has awakened or risen

Uh, somehow has made our ablution seeing other human beings and said “morning, how are you?” Fine, thanks and you?”

Is amazing. And wherever that abides in the human being there is the nobleness of the human spirit.

despite it all, Black and White, Asain, Spanish, Native American, pretty, plain, thin, fat.

Vow to celibate, we rise.

You may write me down in history,

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

Just cause I walk as if I’ve got oil wells pumping in my living room.

Just like suns and like moons with the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries?

Does my sassiness upset you?

Don’t take it so hard just cause I laugh as if I have gold mines diggin’ in my own backyard.

You can shoot me with your words,

You can cut me with your lies,

You can kill me with your hatefulness,

But just like life,

I'll rise.

Does my sexiness offend you?

Aw, does it come as a surprise that I dance

As if I have a diamond at the meeting of my thighs.

Out of the huts of history's shame I rise,

Up from a past rooted in pain, I rise

A black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling, I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear, I rise.

Into a daybreak mircalously clear, I rise.

Bring the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

And so, naturally,

There I go rising.