“There is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it.” Who is Amanda Gorman, the young African American poet who won everyone over on inauguration day.
Last month, a young 22-year-old African American poet and activist received a video call. In these times when the safest way to meet is through a screen, the sentence might seem entirely ordinary. The caller, however, was no ordinary person, but a member of the staff of the future President of the United States of America Joe Biden. After Jill Biden saw one of her readings at the Library of Congress, she felt she was the right person to write and read something at the inauguration ceremony. And so that girl, whose name is Amanda Gorman, became the youngest person ever to participate as a poet at a presidential inauguration.
Gorman was born in 1998 in a "strange intersection of Los Angeles", as she herself described it in an interview with the New York Times: a concentration of African American neighbourhood, Black elegance, white gentrification and Latino culture. Her life was divided between a private school in Malibu and the apartment she shared with her mother, Joan Wicks, a teacher by profession, and her siblings. It was a childhood in which she often felt like an outsider; she herself admits she was convinced she was an "alien", certainly not a child prodigy. She liked to spend her days on a bench writing in her diary or building her own personal dictionary, while her peers played a little further away or were captivated by television — which at home remained constantly switched off at her mother's insistence; she wanted to read everything, discover everything, do everything.
She always preferred the written word, which came more easily to her than speaking, above all because there were certain sounds she was unable to pronounce, which caused her great shame. And yet Gorman finds her voice all the same, and she does so through reading the writer Toni Morrison, who allows her to discover that a girl with skin like hers can also be the heroine of a story. And so, through writing, she transforms herself into the protagonist of her own story: a young African American woman who is ashamed of nothing, who knows what it means to be silenced by the world, one of a kind.
She makes herself a promise — that she will never stop writing, never stop telling the stories of the most marginalised people. When she decides to start publishing, it is the early years of high school, the years in which she takes part in free poetry workshops at Beyond Baroque and at the nonprofit WriteGirl. In 2017 she receives the title of National Youth Poet Laureate and it comes as no surprise that she has in the meantime made it to Harvard University, where she graduates with honours in sociology. But it will most likely be the day of 20 January that she will remember for some time to come.
When she ends that video call, Gorman has no real guidelines on what she will need to write, nor any restrictions; she only knows that the theme must be a united America, something she herself hopes for and believes in. So she begins with research: she re-reads and revisits the speeches of great American leaders such as Martin Luther King and reaches out to other poets who have taken part in presidential inaugurations. Two weeks ago, she feels exhausted, she is frightened — as any human being in her position would be — afraid of not being equal to the task. She tries to write a few lines every day, having realised it is the best solution, and in the meantime, on 6 January, it seems that a portion of America, loyal to the outgoing president, has decided to lose its mind by attempting to seize the Capitol by force. Gorman stays up late and decides she does not want to cut that event out of her 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.Amanda Gorman
When the day of 20 January arrives, her poem "The hill we climb" is of course ready; its author has read and re-read it to prepare herself for the moment that will place her alongside other names — Robert Frost, Maya Angelou, Elizabeth Alexander, Richard Blanco — who before her have rested their hands on that lectern. For five minutes the world stands still, enchanted by the words of a young woman who speaks of herself, of her roots tied to African American slavery, of an America that has suffered, but that knows how to rise again through the unity of its people, like a phoenix from its ashes.
The web goes wild when Gorman finishes drawing us into her desires, into her dreams for a future that can exist, one she invites us too to believe in. Millions of people share her words — some a verse, some another. Some wipe away tears, others cannot stop smiling. Still others search for copies of one of her books, which will not be published in America until September (by Viking Books), bearing the same title as the poem that consecrated her to the world.
On 20 January in Washington the sun shone warmer than usual, and it was certainly helped along by Amanda Gorman.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms 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.Amanda Gorman
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've 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've 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 gazes 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.
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 it 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.
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.
With 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 wind-swept north-east 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.
In every known nook of our nation, in every corner called our country,
our people, diverse and beautiful, will emerge, battered and beautiful.
When day comes, we step out of the shade, aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms 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.
