Africa Suffering Quotes

Before we even get to a description of the violence perpetrated by white slavers, these lines foreshadow the oncoming disaster. Check out the adjectives: "ungentled" and "bold" aren't exactly a warm and fuzzy combination, are they? That's precisely the unsettling feeling Angelou wants to create, so that by the time we get to the actual violence, we're already on the edge of our seats.

Notice how both of these lines start with verbs? It breaks each line into a short, violent action – "took" and "sold" seem almost like wounds that erupt onto each new line. The absence of much other description makes these actions stand out in stark relief.

For Angelou, Jesus is an imposition upon cultures that already had their own well-developed belief systems. The fact that this line starts with a verb (like all the others in the middle of the second stanza) allows the speaker to lump religious conversion in with the forms of violence perpetrated by slavers.