Phenomenal Woman

The career of American activist, memoirist, and poet Maya Angelou—often called a “phenomenal woman” herself—is noted for poems that speak to Black experience, human resilience in the face of oppression, as well as the strength and beauty of women. 

The poem “Phenomenal Woman” first appeared in Cosmopolitan magazine in 1978. Later that year, it became part of Angelou’s third collection of poetry, And Still I Rise. This lyric poem, which details the special qualities of the speaker that don’t align necessarily with conventional standards of beauty, has become one of Angelou’s most popular. The written version contains four stanzas, but during many speaking engagements Angelou added an additional stanza emphasizing the interconnected history of women in the audience. 

After its initial publication, “Phenomenal Woman” was featured in the film Poetic Justice (1993). It was also published in Angelou’s The Complete Collected Poems (1994), Phenomenal Woman: Four Poems Celebrating Women (1995), and the posthumous Complete Poetry (2015). During her later career, Angelou was very popular and widely respected. She read at the inauguration of US President Bill Clinton in 1993 and was featured prominently on The Oprah Winfrey Show throughout the 1990s and 2000s. Her poems remain popular today.

POET BIOGRAPHY

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual assault.

Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928, in St. Louis, Missouri, to doorman Bailey Johnson Sr. and nurse Vivian Baxter. Her older brother Bailey Jr. gave her the nickname Maya when he couldn’t pronounce her first name. The Johnsons divorced in 1931, sending the children to live with their paternal grandmother in Arkansas.

Four years later, the children returned to their mother. In 1936, Angelou was sexually assaulted by her mother’s boyfriend. Although the man was found guilty of the crime, he received only a day’s jail time. Upon his release, he was murdered, perhaps by Angelou’s uncles. After this trauma, Angelou developed selective mutism until a teacher who noticed Angelou’s love of reading encouraged her to speak again by noting its benefits in the composition of poetry.

In 1944, 16-year-old Angelou became the first Black female streetcar conductor in San Francisco, California. A year later, shortly after graduating high school, she gave birth to her son Guy Johnson. In 1951, she married Greek sailor and aspiring musician Enistasious Tosh Angelos. She and dancer Alvin Ailey performed as “Al & Rita”; their act didn’t succeed, so she went solo, taking the stage name Maya Angelou. In 1954, Angelou divorced Angelos and joined the European touring company of Porgy and Bess; she recorded the album Miss Calypso in 1957.

In 1960, she met civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., and actively participated in the civil rights movement, raising awareness and funds as an organizer for the Sothern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). After a short marriage to South African freedom fighter Vusumzi Make ended, Angelou and her now teenage son Guy moved to Accra, Ghana, where she became a close friend of civil rights activist Malcolm X; they returned to the US in 1965 to build a new civil rights organization, but he was assassinated shortly after. In 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. asked for her help in organizing a civil rights march; he was assassinated on April 4, 1968 (Angelou’s birthday). 

With encouragement from American novelist James Baldwin, Angelou threw herself into producing a 10-part docuseries called Blacks, Blues, Black! for National Educational Television (later PBS). Then, in 1969, she completed the first volume of her autobiography, I Know why the Caged Bird Sings, which garnered international acclaim. Angelou’s first book of poetry, Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water 'fore I Diiie, was published in 1971 and nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. 

In 1973, she married Welsh carpenter Paul du Feu. During the next 10 years, she wrote musical compositions, articles, short stories, scripts for the stage and screen, documentaries, autobiographies, books of essays, children’s books, and poetry. She also continued acting, receiving a Tony Award in 1973. Another book of poetry, Oh Pray My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well appeared in 1975; the collection And Still I Rise, in which “Phenomenal Woman” appears, was published in 1978. In 1981, Angelou and du Feu divorced, and she accepted a lifetime professorship at Wake Forest University in North Carolina. 

In the 1980s, Angelou produced three more volumes of poetry: Shaker, Why Don't You Sing? (1983), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990). In 1993, Angelou recited “On the Pulse of Morning” for the presidential inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton. In 1995, she was commissioned to compose the poem for the 50th anniversary of the United Nations, which became “A Brave and Startling Truth.” In these years, she also published four more volumes of her autobiography.

In 2010, Angelou donated her personal papers and career memorabilia to the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem. In 2011, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from US President Barack Obama. Angelou died on May 28, 2014, at age 86.

POEM TEXT

Angelou, Maya. “Phenomenal Woman.” 1978. Poetry Foundation.

In several public readings, Angelou added additional lines to the standard published version of “Phenomenal Woman” that was written in 1978. From the 1980s through the 2000s, filmed performances of Angelou (See: Further Reading & Resources) show her altering, “That’s me” (Line 60), to, “That’s my mother” (Line 60). She then extends the sentiment by adding: 

And all your mothers

And then my grandmothers

And all your grandmothers

And my great-grandmothers

And your great-grandmothers

And my great great

And your great great

And all you women here

And me.

Note: This guide occasionally refers to this additional stanza, but primarily focuses on the 1978 version. 

SUMMARY

The poem is written from the point of view of a woman speaker who announces that other women may not understand her appeal, since she doesn’t meet a conventional standard of beauty. The speaker, however, is proud of several of her other physical attributes, including her size, walk, and smile. She asserts that she is exceptional regardless of how she is viewed. When she enters a place self-assured, most of the men there will be affected due to her inner passion, her smile, and her happy confidence. She is, she notes again, remarkable. Meanwhile, conventionally pretty women don’t understand why this is so, and men, too, are mystified by their attraction to her. The speaker insists that the way she holds herself, her physical body, and the “grace of my style” (Line 41), make her memorable and mesmerizing. This attitude explains why she can walk tall and why she doesn’t have to be aggressive about her power. She believes her pride should make others feel confident, too. She ends with a recurrent refrain that she is an exceptional person.