igo, you descend/And step lightly over/My centuries of horror/And take my hand," (Angelou, 210)Another symbol frequently used in African folklore and restated in Angelous poetry is the drums. A staple in all ancient African rituals, this symbol is a tie to the past. Mentioned in Equality, Angelou uses the continuous beating and unchanging rhythms of the drums to declare that she will not change to be equal "while my drums beat out the message/and the rhythms never change./Hear the tempo so compelling,/hear the blood throb in my veins./Yes, my drums are beating nightly,/and the rhythms never change." (Angelou, 232)Frequent mentions of her heroes (Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Uncle Tom just to name a few) litter her poetry, adding detail to the pictures she paints if one knows the history behind these prominent references. Elegy, for example was dedicated to Harriet Tubman and Fredrick Douglass, who she looked up to and admired for their courage and devotion to their race.Throughout her literature, there is a intrinsic sense of self-affirmation and personal pride in everything from her sexuality, "Does my haughtiness offend you?/ Does my sexiness upset you?/Does it come as a surprise/That I dance like Ive got diamonds/At the meeting of my thighs?" (Angelou, 163) to her understanding of the world "Lying, thinking/Last night/How to find my soul a home/Where water is not thirsty/And bread loaf is not stone/I came up with one thing/And I dont believe Im wrong/ That nobody,/But nobody/Can make it out here alone." (Angelou, 74)She exalts her homeland of the South despite her dark past there, from being raped by her mothers boyfriend when she was eight to becoming an unplanned mother at the age of sixteen with a father she barely knew. "Remember our days, Susannah./ O Atlanta, O deep, and/Once-lost city," (Angelou, 187)Although bare and contingent on rhyme and cadence, Angelous "warmth, honesty, strength, and defiance come through i...
