Yesterday at President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’s inauguration, Amanda Gorman stole the show. Lady Gaga? J-Lo? Garth Brooks? No contest. This twenty-two-year-old Black daughter of a Los Angeles school teacher, born with a speech impediment, recited her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” to a rapturous reception across social and mainstream media.
Appropriate, no? Amidst a plague, an attempted insurrection, and a spiraling series of crises, this young woman clad in canary yellow gave us hope for healing, hope, and justice.
Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in American history. Then again, at 16 years old she was named the Youth Poet Laureate of Los Angeles and, three years later while at Harvard, became the first National Youth Poet Laureate. She came to the Inaugural Committee’s attention after Jill Biden went to her poetry reading at the Library of Congress.
She was invited in December, not much time to create a lengthy poem. In “The Hill We Climb,” she describes herself as “a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother,” one who “can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.” She told the New York Times, “I had this huge thing, probably one of the most important things I’ll ever do in my career. It was like, if I try to climb this mountain all at once, I’m just going to pass out.”
Gorman was struggling with the task, writing a few lines a day. When she witnessed the domestic terror assault on the Capitol on January 6th, her reaction became part of the poem:
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation rather than share it,
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
It can never be permanently defeated.
Like much of the auguration —from Jennifer Lopez singing Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land” to President Biden’s call for “bringing America together” –Gorman’s poem is about unity, even in the wake of dissolution:
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
Gorman captured this American moment of urgency, this cacophonous music of the spheres. And everyone heard:
Gorman’s future success seems assured. She has two books coming out and she told the LA Times that she plans to run for president in 2036 when she’ll be 38 years old.
She’s climbing that hill. Now if only all of us can join her.
{This was first published at Education Post.)
Full video: https://twitter.com/AleksandraWucka/status/1351956445814812672
THE HILL WE CLIMB
When day comes, we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?
The loss we carry. A sea we must wade.
We braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace, and the norms and notions of what “just” is isn’t always justice.
And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one.
And, yes, we are far from polished, far from pristine, but that doesn’t mean we are striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge our union with purpose.
To compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and conditions of man.
And so we lift our gaze, not to what stands between us, but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know to put our future first, we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another.
We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade, the hill we climb, if only we dare.
It’s because being American is more than a pride we inherit.
It’s the past we step into and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation, rather than share it.
Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth, in this faith we trust, for while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption.
We feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs of such a terrifying hour.
But within it we found the power to author a new chapter, to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So, while once we asked, how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe, now we assert, how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?
We will not march back to what was, but move to what shall be: a country that is bruised but whole, benevolent but bold, fierce and free.
We will not be turned around or interrupted by intimidation because we know our inaction and inertia will be the inheritance of the next generation, become the future.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain.
If we merge mercy with might, and might with right, then love becomes our legacy and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country better than the one we were left.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest, we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the golden hills of the West.
We will rise from the windswept Northeast where our forefathers first realized revolution.
We will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the Midwestern states.
We will rise from the sun-baked South.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover.
And every known nook of our nation and every corner called our country, our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade of flame and unafraid.
The new dawn balloons as we free it.
For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
