Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Ann Johnson on April 4, 1928 is an American autobiographer and poet who has been called “America’s most visible black female autobiographer” by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. Maya Angelou’s “Phenomenal Woman” in included in the collection And Still I Rise.

The woman portrayed here is the woman of substance, as she rises above conventional paradigms that enslaves her into a domestic archetype or aesthetic construct. The pretty /plain woman dialectical pair may also serve to emblematize the dialectical pair of the white/black with regard to an American Black writer.

The poem challenges the oft-quoted adage that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. In this modern era of ‘reification’ or commodification, people are akin to things, that they are assessed on the basis of their packaging and material worth. The more the individual is visually appealing, the more the confidence-factor. In such a context, Angelou’s Phenomenal Woman poses a question mark, as to what lends her so much of confidence. She quips with unflinching self-assurance that she may not be her appealing in the conventional sense. Nor does her figure pose a challenge to a fashion model. People fail to believe her as she reiterates that her x-factor lies in something beyond this.…