The Full Text of “Woman Work”
The Full Text of “Woman Work”
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“Woman Work” Introduction
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“Woman Work” was written by the American poet Maya Angelou and first published in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise. The speaker, implied to be a Black woman, talks about all the "work" she has to do—everything from cooking, cleaning, and caring for children to picking cotton and cutting sugar cane. In referencing both domestic duties and the history of enslavement, the speaker implies that Black women have long been thanklessly expected to devote their time and energy to others without taking anything for themselves. Ultimately, the speaker can only find rest and a sense of freedom by taking in the beauty of the natural world—the one thing that she can "call [her] own."
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“Woman Work” Summary
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The speaker lists out the many chores she has on her plate: she has to care for the kids, patch the clothes, clean the floor, and shop for the food. After all that, she has to cook, change the baby’s diaper, feed the people who are visiting, tend to the garden, iron the shirts, get the kids dressed, cut the sugar cane, clean up the hut she's living in, check on the people who are sick, and pick the cotton.
The speaker appeals to the natural world for relief, calling on the sun to shine down her, the rain to gently fall on her, and the dewdrops to once again cool her forehead.
She calls on the storm's strongest winds to blow her away from this place and across the sky until she can rest again.
She calls on the white snowflakes to softly blanket her, their touch like cold kisses, so that tonight she can get some rest.
All these elements of nature—the sun, the rain, and the arc of the sky, the mountains, seas, forests, the shining stars, and the moonlight—are the only things that the speaker feels truly belong to her.
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“Woman Work” Themes
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Black Women’s Labor and Freedom
“Woman Work” describes the pressure that women, and Black women in particular, face to work and care for other people. The speaker must cook, clean, pick cotton, cut sugar cane, and take care of everyone around her, finding brief respite only in the freedom offered by the natural world. Through the speaker's experiences, the poem illustrates the way that society's relentless demands on Black women's time and energy can leave them with little, if anything, to call their own.
The speaker begins by listing out a series of domestic chores that have traditionally fall to women—like caring for children, cooking, and cleaning—before transitioning to details that specifically evoke slavery. As the speaker describes how she must “pick cotton” and “cut” sugar “cane,” the poem places modern Black women’s unpaid, often thankless labor within a vital historical context. By referencing both enslavement and traditional housework, the poem implies that society has long claimed Black women’s work, their bodies, and their very lives.
Indeed, the speaker seems to sacrifice her own needs and desires even as she must always “see about the sick,” cook for “company,” and “tend” children. All of her time is filled with other people’s demands, and the poem further suggests that this labor is never-ending: the speaker’s life is a constant series of things she’s “got” to do.
In the end, all that she can “call [her] own” is the fleeting beauty of nature: the rain, sun, snow, and dew, none of which expect anything from her. In the end, the poem paints a picture of the endless, grueling labor that Black women have done and continue to do for others, and which is all too often ignored or minimized by the rest of society.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-30
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The Comfort of Nature
In a world that claims to own Black women and their work, all the speaker of the poem can “call [her] own” is the beauty of the natural world. The poem implies that nature can offer a sense of relief, peace, and belonging for the speaker and for other women who have been forced into backbreaking and unjust labor over the centuries.
While unfair and incessant demands rob the speaker of her time and independence, she can still find consolation in things like the warm sunshine and the refreshing rain. The speaker says that “all that [she] can call [her] own” is nature, which exists outside of the "hut" in which she cooks, cleans, and cares for children.
Nature is one thing that lays no claim to the speaker's energy or time. In fact, nature seems to work for the speaker, who calls on it to "cool [her] brow" and grant her "rest." Nature thus represents freedom for the speaker, who imagines herself essentially dissolving into its beauty. She wants to“float across the sky,” for example, and envisions herself covered with snow.
While these images bring a sense of relief and peace, they also might make readers think of death—of the speaker's body buried under the ground and her soul in heaven. In this reading, the poem implies that only in death—and, through death, becoming one with nature—can the speaker truly escape from the endless toil of her earthly work.
The poem's vision of nature is thus both consoling and bleak: on the one hand, the speaker finds relief and comfort in nature's refreshing beauty. On the other, it's possible that she feels as if she'll never truly be free until she's returned to nature in death.
Where this theme appears in the poem:- Lines 1-30
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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Woman Work”
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Lines 1-4
I've got the ...
... food to shopThe title “Woman Work” lets the reader know right away what this poem will be about: women's labor. And in the opening lines, the speaker dives right in by describing some of the work that she has to do: she must take care of the children, patch up clothes, clean the floor, and shop for food. All of these are domestic chores that women have, historically, been expected to do without pay or recognition.
The poetic devices that Angelou uses here evoke the drudgery of this work. For example, the anaphora of these lines (that repetition of "The" over and over again) makes the list feel monotonous and relentless. Each line also ends with a verb (“tend,” “mend,” “mop,” and “shop”). This broader parallelism adds to the sense of an unending routine—that the speaker has to do all of this work, day after day.
The list also uses asyndeton: the speaker omits conjunctions (like “and”) that might typically connect list items together. This speeds the poem up and also suggests that when the speaker completes one task, she must quickly go on to the next, with no time to rest.
Adding to that sense of relentlessness is the poem's steady rhythm. While the poem doesn't stick to one meter overall, it does very often repeat the exact same, or close to the same, pattern in two lines in a row. This whole first section follows an iambic meter, for the most part—a bouncy rhythm consisting of unstressed beats followed by stressed beats (da-DUM). Take lines 2-3:
The floor to mop
The food to shopEven the sounds of the words themselves here are repetitive, as in the alliteration of “floor” and “food.” The quick, simple rhyme scheme makes the lines feel monotonous and predictable: “tend” rhymes with “mend,” while “mop” rhymes with “shop,” creating an easy AABB pattern. The speaker knows exactly what she's expected to do, and goes through the motions quickly and efficiently.
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Lines 5-10
Then the chicken ...
... tots to dress -
Lines 11-14
The cane to ...
... cotton to pick. -
Lines 15-18
Shine on me, ...
... my brow again. -
Lines 19-22
Storm, blow me ...
... can rest again. -
Lines 23-26
Fall gently, snowflakes ...
... me rest tonight. -
Lines 27-30
Sun, rain, curving ...
... call my own.
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“Woman Work” Symbols
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Water
Partway through the poem, the speaker asks the rain to fall on her and the drops of dew to “cool [her] brow” (implying that the speaker’s forehead is sweaty and hot from all of her work). This water symbolizes the cleansing and renewing power of the natural world.
The rain and dew literally offer the speaker respite and relief, washing away the sweat and dirt from her body. At the same time, they also evoke the way that nature offers the speaker a kind of spiritual renewal, momentarily washing away the deeper burdens of her work.
Dew in particular suggests rebirth and new beginnings, given that it appears on plants early in the morning. Its mention here evokes the way that nature helps the speaker find renewed strength in nature.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Line 16: “Rain on me, rain”
- Line 17: “Fall softly, dewdrops”
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The Wind and Sky
The wind and sky in the poem represent the sense of freedom and escape that the speaker finds in nature.
When the speaker calls on the "Storm" to "blow" her away with its "fiercest wind," this speaks to her desire escape to somewhere far away from the world that places all of these demands on her time and body. Her desire to "float across the sky" similarly represents her desire to be free of the endless work she is expected to do on the ground.
At the same time, these symbolic associations might suggest that the speaker feels she can only truly find freedom in death. The sky often represents the afterlife in literature (given its association with heaven). That the speaker envisions herself floating in the sky, then, might imply that in such oppressive circumstances, the speaker can only find true relief in death.
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 19-21: “Storm, blow me from here / With your fiercest wind / Let me float across the sky”
- Line 27: “curving sky”
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The Snow
Snow and cold are linked with winter, a season that generally symbolizes death. When the speaker calls on the "snowflakes" to "[c]over" her, then, this might subtly represent her belief that she can only escape her endless work by dying (and, in turn, being buried in the earth and becoming one with the natural world that provides her with "rest").
Where this symbol appears in the poem:- Lines 23-26: “Fall gently, snowflakes / Cover me with white / Cold icy kisses and / Let me rest tonight.”
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“Woman Work” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
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Anaphora
The poem uses anaphora to emphasize the endless labor that the speaker is expected to do. For example, the word “The” repeats in line after line in the opening stanza, each time to name a task that the speaker must accomplish. This relentless repetition reflects the relentlessness of the speaker's work.
The speaker also repeats the phrase “I’ve got” anaphorically in this stanza, along with the slightly different versions “I got” and “I gotta.” This anaphora again reinforces just how much the speaker has on her plate, as well as the fact that she has little say in the matter: this labor is something that she has to do, suggesting that she has next to no ownership over her own work, body, or life.
The poem’s anaphora also calls attention to the parallelism throughout this stanza. Note that in these opening lines, each line begins with an object, and then moves to the verb, or the action the speaker must take. For instance, the speaker notes that she has “The floor to mop / The food to shop,” and so on. This parallelism reinforces the idea that in this constant, backbreaking labor, the speaker is almost entirely erased, reduced to these tasks that she must do.
Where anaphora appears in the poem:- Line 1: “I've got”
- Line 2: “The”
- Line 3: “The”
- Line 4: “The”
- Line 6: “The”
- Line 7: “I got”
- Line 8: “The”
- Line 9: “I've got”
- Line 10: “The”
- Line 11: “The”
- Line 12: “I gotta”
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Repetition
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Colloquialism
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Juxtaposition
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Caesura
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Asyndeton
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Apostrophe
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Alliteration
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Consonance
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Assonance
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"Woman Work" Vocabulary
Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
- Tots
- Cane
- Hut
- See about
- Brow
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(Location in poem: Line 10: “The tots to dress”)
"Tots" is a colloquial term for "children."
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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Woman Work”
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Form
The poem’s 30 lines are organized into five stanzas of various lengths:
- The first stanza is fourteen lines long.
- The other four stanzas are quatrains, meaning that each is four lines long.
This form helps to convey the poem’s meaning. In the first, long stanza the speaker describes the backbreaking work she is expected to do. The length of the stanza calls attention to the speaker’s relentless labor, suggesting that her work is neverending.
Then, as the speaker addresses the natural world, the form shifts. The even, measured quatrains in this second half of the poem suggest that the speaker is able to find some sense of relief in nature. Each quatrain is made out of a single sentence (each shorter than the long opening sentence), allowing for a moment of pause and rest in the white space between these stanzas as well.
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Meter
“Woman Work” is written in accentual meter. In this type of meter, each line has a set number of stressed syllables, regardless of the total number of syllables in the line. (By contrast, in other types of meter like iambic pentameter, each line has a fixed number of stresses and syllables).
Throughout the poem’s opening stanza, each line has two stressed beats (for the most part), even though the lines have varying numbers of syllables. Consider, for example, lines 2-5:
The clothes to mend
The floor to mop
The food to shop
Then the chicken to fryNote that each line has two stressed syllables, even though the lines vary somewhat in syllabic length; the first three lines here have four beats, but the fifth has six beats. Still, this pattern of two stresses per line creates a regular rhythm that conveys the monotony and relentlessness of the speaker’s work. Additionally, this stress pattern calls attention to the verb and object in each line: the speaker must “mend” the “clothes,” “mop” the “floor,” and so on.
The meter changes in the second half of the poem. As the speaker addresses the natural world, the lines contain more stressed beats and also vary in how many stresses they do have. For example, in the second stanza, each line has three to four stressed syllables:
Shine on me, sunshine
Rain on me, rain
Fall softly, dewdrops
And cool my brow again.Then, in the closing stanza, each line has four to five stressed syllables:
Sun, rain, curving sky
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.This increasing number of stresses in each line illustrates the sense of rest, peace, and expansiveness the speaker can find in the natural world. The variation in the number of stresses from stanza to stanza also conveys this sense of freedom, as the poem moves out of its prior constraints and creates a different kind of rhythm.
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Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme changes over the course of the poem.
The first stanza follows a steady pattern of AABBCC etc. In other words, the stanza is made up of rhyming couplets:
[...] tend A
[...] mend A
[...] mop B
[...] shop BAnd so forth. In this first, long, stanza, the AABB rhyme scheme contributes to the sense that the speaker must work relentlessly, without pause. Each rhyme ending is followed in quick succession by another, illustrating the way in which the speaker must move immediately from one task to the next.
Then, as the speaker addresses nature and asks it to help her rest, the poem shifts to an ABCB rhyme scheme. Here's stanza 2, for example:
[...] sunshine A
[...] rain B
[...] dewdrops C
[...] again. BThrough the end of the poem, this more open, alternating pattern structure slows the poem down and creates a different kind of music. The change in rhyme scheme reflects the fact that the speaker can find some sense of peace and relief in nature.
Importantly, too, the rhymes themselves become looser at this point in the poem. For example, “rain” and “again” are slant rhymes, and “wind” and “again” in the next stanza are even looser slant rhymes (the consonant /n/ sounds connect the words together, but both the vowel sounds and end sounds of the words are different). This loosening of the rhyme scheme suggests that in nature, the speaker can finally feel free of the control imposed on her by the rest of society.
Additionally, in the last three lines of the poem, “stone” and “own” create full rhymes, while “glow”—which appears in the intervening line—echoes this rhyme with its long /oh/ sound:
Mountain, oceans, leaf and stone
Star shine, moon glow
You're all that I can call my own.These long vowel sounds help to convey the rest and peace the speaker imagines herself experiencing, and also end the poem on an especially musical, passionate note.
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“Woman Work” Speaker
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The speaker is someone burdened with the kind of domestic labor—cooking, cleaning, and caring for children—that has traditionally fallen to women. She might be a housekeeper, cook, nanny, or simply a wife and mother tasked with caring for her home and family. The speaker is also implied to be Black, given that she alludes to enslavement in her references to picking cotton and cutting sugar cane.
These details are essential to the poem: the poem isn't talking about the drudgery of work in general but is specifically highlighting the experiences of Black women, which have all too often been erased and unacknowledged by the rest of society.
It's possible to read the speaker as one individual person who must literally do all of this work. At the same time, the speaker can be read as a kind of collective voice, one that brings together experiences of many Black women throughout history who were expected to devote all their time and energy to others.
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“Woman Work” Setting
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The poem combines a few different settings into one, seeming to span landscapes and centuries in order to make a broader point about the expectations placed on Black women throughout history.
The speaker says that she must pick cotton and cut sugar cane, for example, work that enslaved people were forced to do throughout the American South and the Caribbean. Black Americans continued to pick cotton by hand in the South well into the 20th century, often as sharecroppers or for low wages. The speaker also mentions the kind of domestic work that society often expects of women even into the modern day (i.e., cooking, cleaning, and caring for children).
The fact that the speaker mentions all these types of work suggests that the poem is actually incorporating different physical locations and periods of time. In doing so, the poem shows how Black women have been expected to do seemingly unending labor over the course of centuries.
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Literary and Historical Context of “Woman Work”
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Literary Context
Maya Angelou first published “Woman Work” in her 1978 collection And Still I Rise. Before writing “Woman Work,” Angelou wrote a poem called “One More Round” (also published in And Still I Rise), which describes work done by both men and women. Upon hearing “One More Round” read aloud by a man, however, Angelou said that she realized that it was, in fact, a poem primarily about men’s labor. As such, she decided to write this poem about the specific work that women have traditionally done in society.
Angelou was a major voice in American literature. Her work, which often explores themes of trauma, oppression, racism, survival, and strength, includes collections of poetry, plays, autobiographies, and children’s literature. In addition to “Woman Work,” And Still I Rise includes several of Angelou’s most famous poems, including “Still I Rise” (the title poem) and “Phenomenal Woman.”
Angelou also participated in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and '70s, a movement in which Black artists centered their own experiences and encouraged Black pride. The movement formed in response to the ongoing racist oppression of Black Americans and included writers and artists such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, June Jordan, and Etheridge Knight. “Woman Work” reflects some of the aims of the movement, in that it explores experiences of Black women that have all too often been overlooked, minimized, and erased by the dominant white society.
Angelou continued to write until the end of her life in 2014. Her memoirs, poetry, and activism have had a profound and lasting impact on American society. In recognition of her life’s work, President Barack Obama awarded Angelou the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2010.
Historical Context
Angelou wrote “Woman Work” in the late 1970s, during the women’s rights movement in the United States. This movement emerged out of the civil rights movement and fought for gender equality and a range of legal reforms, including increased reproductive rights and equal pay. The women’s movement also called attention to the extensive unpaid, domestic work that women historically have done—the kinds of work that this poem highlights.
Angelou also wrote the poem in the wake of the civil rights movement and, as noted above, the Black Arts Movement. It's important to note that, while the title refers to women’s work in general, the poem itself specifically centers Black women’s experiences, illustrating how society makes intense demands on their energy, time, and bodies.
The poem draws on a range of other historical contexts as well. For example, the speaker alludes to slavery and references being forced to do backbreaking work like picking cotton and cutting sugar cane. At the same time, the speaker references what could be interpreted as modern-day domestic labor that has historically fallen to women of color, including housecleaning, cooking, and nannying. By referencing these different contexts, the poem shows how the demands placed on Black women in the present are part of a larger historical framework.
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More “Woman Work” Resources
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External Resources
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Maya Angelou Reading “Woman Work” — Listen to Angelou recite both this poem and her poem “One More Round” aloud.
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Official Website of Maya Angelou — Learn more about Maya Angelou’s life and legacy at her official website, which includes information about her books, music based on her poems, and more.
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Biography of Maya Angelou — Read about Maya Angelou’s life, her poetry, and her civil rights work.
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Maya Angelou’s “Odd Jobs” — While “Woman Work” explores the typical, unending work expected of Black women, Maya Angelou herself had a range of unusual jobs—including as the first Black woman streetcar conductor in San Francisco. Learn more in this article from the Academy of American Poets, which also explores the “odd jobs” of other American poets.
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And Still I Rise — Read more about And Still I Rise, the 1978 collection in which Angelou first published “Woman Work,” at the website of the book’s publisher, Penguin Random House.
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LitCharts on Other Poems by Maya Angelou
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