The Peace Lily Symbol in I'll Fly Away: Blooming in the Shade

What Is the Peace Lily in the Poem?

In Chapter 44 of I'll Fly Away, the speaker describes the peace lily as a flower that “can grow and survive even if it’s left in the shade.” The poem draws a direct parallel to human life: “We don’t always choose our environment, but we can’t let that stop us from blooming.” The peace lily appears only once in the book, but its short, aphoristic lines distill a central metaphor for the entire collection.

The peace lily (Spathiphyllum) is a real plant known for thriving in low light. The poem uses this botanical fact to frame a wider statement about resilience—the ability to grow and flourish even when external conditions are far from ideal. The flower does not demand full sun; it adapts. The metaphor suggests that human beings, too, can find ways to bloom without waiting for perfect circumstances.

How the Symbol Resonates Through the Book

Although the peace lily appears only once, its logic echoes throughout I'll Fly Away. The collection repeatedly examines characters and moments where beauty, growth, or joy emerge from shadowy environments.

Consider the poem “This is how I scare the dirt”, where the speaker reverses his own burial and declares “Not today” to death. The pen becomes a shovel—an instrument to dig oneself out of the grave. That act of self-resurrection mirrors the peace lily’s ability to push through shade.

In “and the morning shows up”, the speaker treats each day as “free refills” and declares that every hour can be happy hour simply because he is still alive. That deliberate choice to find joy in ordinary dawns is another form of blooming in shade—refusing to let a grim environment define one’s outlook.

The poem “Here I am today” frames the speaker as “a breath that doesn’t mind repeating itself” and “living proof that sometimes you plan a funeral, but a birthday party shows up instead.” Again, the metaphor of unexpected life sprouting from a place meant for death echoes the peace lily’s quiet defiance.

Perhaps the most direct echo appears in “Lasalle”, where the speaker calls his brother “the toughest flower in my mother’s garden.” That image blends floral delicacy with stubborn strength—a human peace lily. The brother is described as “John Henry folklore with an alternate ending: the machine breaks, and he does not.” The flower metaphor is gendered and familial, but the core idea of blooming through difficulty is identical.

Connections to Themes and Characters

Theme: Defiance and Resilience

The peace lily is the collection’s mascot for defiance. It does not fight the shade; it simply grows anyway. This matches the speaker’s many acts of resistance—refusing to stay buried, choosing love over violence, redefining black fatherhood.

Theme: Language and Its Limitations

In “Mama Saba asks”, the speaker cannot find an English word for a concept his grandmother seeks. He compares English to “a shiny hammer”—a useful but limited tool. The peace lily’s lesson—that blooming is possible regardless of environment—is one of those concepts that no single word can fully capture. The poem itself becomes the tool to convey that meaning.

Theme: Legacy and Memory

The peace lily does not bloom for applause; it blooms because that is its nature. This quiet persistence aligns with the book’s interest in legacies—what we leave behind, how we are remembered. The speaker’s daughter Zoey redefines his world (Chapter 53), and the peace lily suggests that such transformation can occur even when the world feels cold or neglectful.

Theme: Systemic Racism and Violence

The peace lily’s environment of shade can be read as a metaphor for systemic oppression. In “The youth choir sings ‘I believe I can fly’”, the speaker critiques how society forgets Black women when a perpetrator makes danceable music. That erasure is a form of shade—an environment that makes survival hard. Yet the peace lily insists that growth is still possible, even when the ecosystem is hostile.

Character: The Speaker

The speaker is the primary bloomer in the collection. He survives trauma, fatherhood, grief, and rage. The peace lily is his plant analogue. He tells himself, “we can’t let that stop us from blooming,” and the book traces his many strategies for doing exactly that—from whispering his daughter’s name to cool his anger (Chapter 52) to writing poems that function as shovels.

Character: Zoey

In “Zoey”, the speaker’s world shrinks to a three-foot-tall, sixteen-pound human being. That intimate scale is another form of blooming: finding enough light in a single small relationship to sustain oneself. The peace lily needs very little light—just as the speaker needs nothing more than Zoey to redefine his world.

Study Questions with Answers

1. How does the peace lily poem’s structure (short lines, direct statement) reinforce its message?

The poem uses extremely short lines—often just two or three words—mirroring the simplicity of the peace lily itself. The brevity makes the final line (“we can’t let that / stop us from blooming”) feel like a natural, unforced conclusion. There is no embellishment; the statement is as direct as the flower’s ability to grow. The form enacts the content: minimal conditions produce maximum meaning.

2. Compare the peace lily’s “shade” to the “dirt” in “This is how I scare the dirt.” What do these two environments share, and how do the speaker’s responses differ?

Both shade and dirt are adverse environments that could stifle growth. In “This is how I scare the dirt,” the speaker actively fights back—puffing out his chest, intimidating the soil, reversing his burial. The response is aggressive and defiant. In the peace lily poem, the response is quieter: the flower simply accepts the shade and blooms anyway. Both poems end in resilience, but one is combative, the other is adaptive. Together they show that resistance can take different forms—shouting or growing.

3. In what ways does the peace lily metaphor connect to the treatment of Black women’s pain in “The youth choir sings ‘I believe I can fly’”?

In that poem, the speaker critiques how society forgets Aaliyah’s age (15) and a 14-year-old girl’s video when a beloved artist creates danceable music. The victims are left in the shade—their stories ignored because the music is too good. The peace lily’s message suggests that even when the environment refuses to acknowledge harm, those harmed can still grow and persist. The poem does not say the victims “bloom” easily, but the peace lily metaphor implies that their value does not depend on the audience’s attention.

4. How does the poem “Zoey” offer a concrete example of the peace lily’s lesson?

In “Zoey,” the speaker measures the world not by abstract circumference (30,000 miles) but by his daughter’s body: three feet tall and sixteen pounds. He says the world has become small enough to pick up. This is a direct example of blooming in shade: the speaker’s initial environment might be one of pain or detachment, but focusing on Zoey provides enough light to thrive. The peace lily needs little; the speaker needs only one person. Both the flower and the father reorient their expectations toward what is possible, not what is optimal.