Motif of Natural ImageryAngelou uses three main groups of natural imagery in her poem “Still I Rise”: words with negative connotations; words with positive connotations and images of natural wealth.

Natural Images with negative connotations:“dirt”, “dust”, “teardrops”, “night”.Angelou uses natural imagery that holds negative connotations to express what she believes the white community perceive her African-American culture as. For example in the stanza“Did you want to see me broken?Bowed head and lowered eyes?Shoulders falling like teardrops.Weakened by my soulful cries.”The image of teardrops in this stanza is used to show how the White culture sees her like she should be crying, sees her as weak. 

Natural Images with positive connotations:“moons”, “suns”, “rooted”, “daybreak”, “tide”, “air”.These natural images with positive connotations are used to show how she sees herself, for example:“Just like moons and like suns,With the certainty of tides,Just like hopes springing high,Still I’ll rise.”Maya is talking about how although the White people are attempting to make her feel like she should be weak, she and her culture and gender are strong and she will hold herself high.

Images of natural wealth:“gold mines”, “oil wells”, “diamonds”.The use of these images is very interesting, because to the white people they would seem like positive things, with them symbolising a physical and superficial wealth and therefore success and happiness. Gold, oil and diamonds have an almost unchanging physical value. Maya, however knows about the concept of blood diamonds, and the fact that gold and oil industries are very corrupt and believes that Black women should see the superficial aspects of these natural things as negative and should not aspire to be like the white men. On the other hand, Angelou is also saying that she acts like she has diamonds, as she acts successful and happy, but she feels this surprises the white community as she doesn’t literally have diamonds. She is expressing her inner wealth with the use of this simile and natural motif. What Angelou is trying to show in the lines such as:“Does my sexiness upset you?Does it come as a surpriseThat I dance like I’ve got diamonds At the meeting of my thighs”is that White men greed for these forms of natural wealth, however Black women should not see these as wealth, but that wealth is inner and standing tall although discriminated against

is true wealth.