With gratitude for her startling and resonant voice,
NPQ remembers Maya Angelou, dead at 86,
with an excerpt from one of her own extraordinary calls to activism and a fully lived life:
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“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?”
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I’ve got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?”
—From And Still I Rise by Maya Angelou
