Weekend Glory
Weekend Glory - context Summary
From and Still I Rise
Included in Maya Angelou’s collection And Still I Rise, Weekend Glory presents a working-class Black woman’s ritual of dignity and release. The poem contrasts weekday labor with the weekend’s transformation: hair, music, dancing, companionship and pride. Angelou frames these pleasures as defiant and necessary responses to economic hardship and social judgment, celebrating modest contentment rather than grand triumph. In context within her work, the poem reinforces recurring concerns with resilience, communal life, and self-definition, showing private celebration as a form of cultural affirmation and survival.
Read Complete AnalysesSome clichty folks don't know the facts, posin' and preenin' and puttin' on acts, stretchin' their backs. They move into condos up over the ranks, pawn their souls to the local banks. Buying big cars they can't afford, ridin' around town actin' bored. If they want to learn how to live life right they ought to study me on Saturday night. My job at the plant ain't the biggest bet, but I pay my bills and stay out of debt. I get my hair done for my own self's sake, so I don't have to pick and I don't have to rake. Take the church money out and head cross town to my friend girl's house where we plan our round. We meet our men and go to a joint where the music is blue and to the point. Folks write about me. They just can't see how I work all week at the factory. Then get spruced up and laugh and dance And turn away from worry with sassy glance. They accuse me of livin' from day to day, but who are they kiddin'? So are they. My life ain't heaven but it sure ain't hell. I'm not on top but I call it swell if I'm able to work and get paid right and have the luck to be Black on a Saturday night.
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