broadlybrazen:

kurumayu:

magdalenarivera: saarqamek: spvcepvssy: staarlord: “Up from a past that’s rooted in pain, I rise.” - Maya Angelou (x) is this a joke like did you really use a maya angelou poem that is literally about her life and overcoming not only racism but sexism and being sexually assaulted for a fucking iron man gifset madame angelou has barely stepped into heaven and y’all steady disrespecting her life and work lmao is this actually happening right now? really? am i actually seeing this shit? what in the fresh hell is this mess

every time I think that MCU fandom can’t surprise me anymore with its bullshit, somebody still finds an exciting new way to be terrible.

There is literally no fucking way to interpret this poem as ~~~universal struggle~~~ or whatever. It is about a particular experience and particular triumph - it is about being a black woman in America, soaking in toxic antiblack racism, and still finding strength and joy and beauty in yourself.

It is not about rich white dude manpain. To wit:

Out of the huts of history’s shame I rise Up from a past that’s rooted in pain I rise I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide, Welling and swelling I bear in the tide. Leaving behind nights of terror and fear I rise Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear I rise Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave, I am the dream and the hope of the slave. I rise I rise I rise.

I don’t know how someone reads this poem, written by a luminous black artist and activist about her real life struggle as a black American woman, and the real life struggles of millions of black Americans, and still finds it acceptable to stick this poem onto a mediocre gifset of a fictitious rich white warprofiteering imperialist. And I truly can’t fathom how anyone has the unmitigated gall to pull this shit less than a week after Dr. Angelou passed.

Among other things, it is a poem whose narrator declares “I am the dream and the hope of the slave.“ The defiant celebration and glorious power of this poem…It is goddamned sacrilege to appropriate such a thing for whatever fictional white dick you’re obsessing over.

Here is the poem in full.