Amanda Gorman has accomplished what most twenty-four year olds could barely even fathom. She has become the most acclaimed poet of our generation and uses her artistry to educate and inspire the next generation.
Amanda’s story starts as a kindergartener with a speech impediment, struggling to find her voice. In third grade, when learning about poetry in school, Gorman stumbled upon a medium that she could use to express herself and foster her love of writing. She studied the way personal inspirations, such as Martin Luther King and Maya Angelou, delivered their words with potency, and used their examples to overcome her speech impediment to convey the power of her poetry. And when the power came through, the whole world began to listen. In 2014 she became the first Youth Poet Laureate in her hometown of Los Angeles. In 2017, she became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in America. Not only did Gorman receive these prestigious awards, but she was the first to ever hold those titles, which means that her work was so good, that academic and social authorities recognized that it merited more distinction than what was previously available to her peers.
Her early writing career was nurtured by nonprofit organizations such as Urban World, which supports the development and leadership of young writers, and Write Girl LA, a creative writing mentorship and college prep program that she credits as an imperative booster towards accomplishing her goals. This is significant to her presence as a public intellectual because of its grassroots form. Many public intellectuals get their propulsion from graduate degrees obtained at fancy universities, and even though she received her undergraduate degree in sociology from Harvard University, she got there with the help of these small community organizations. By having a more accessible background, she broadens the realm of people who could see the potential for public intellectualism in themselves; to people who might never get to an ivy league school but could easily make it to a neighborhood community center. Gorman, to no surprise, recognizes how important these social initiatives are, and started her own non-profit youth writing and leadership program, One Pen One Page, when she was eighteen.
Gorman’s most popular work is the poem she presented at President Biden’s inauguration in 2021, an appearance that catapulted her words into mainstream social culture. The poem, The Hill We Climb, was finalized the night after the Capitol Riot, and Gorman told the New York Times that she wanted to include "space for grief and horror and hope and unity"in her piece, in order to reflect on the reality of the past few years while still contributing to the celebration of Biden’s administration. It received overwhelmingly positive praise, and with phrases like, “We lay down our arms so we can reach out our arms to one another” and “our people diverse and beautiful, will emerge battered and beautiful,” listeners were able to understand her message as one of unity and healing. The artistry that Gorman writes with injects a feeling of grandeur in her sentences that can evoke emotion in her audience. Dr. Stephen Mack claims, in an article about the relationship between public intellectualism and religion, that "American democracy has always been dependent on public figures–and public intellectuals–whose work has been animated by strong faith." He references how theologians such as Billy Graham and Reinhold Niebuhr have harnessed the power that religious texts hold, the ability to create community and deflate acting in self-interest, to support movements of unity. Gorman shows that modern public intellectuals can have the same power over an increasingly secular population with expressive writing that does not relate back to god. The Hill We Climb is an example of modern support for American democracy.
Her emphasis on unity was intentional, mentioning in an interview that she was inspired by other leaders who took on the task of building harmony in the face of significant division such as Abraham Lincoln. But, in such a bipartisan environment, unity appears hard to achieve without serious compromise. Why should people who have their basic human rights compromised by the Trump administration be willing to reach out their arms to those people and their supporters? A call for unity without a reckoning for those who were responsible for sowing and upholding the hatred and violence that caused the divide comes off like a plea to forgive and forget the white supremacy that plagues this nation’s most fundamental institutions And thus by choosing to publicly endorse unity, Amanda Gorman seems to stick herself in the middle of the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ guys. It is a strategic move to make while the whole nation is watching, but a month later, she expanded on the specific type of unity she promotes. She told Michelle Obama during an interview for Time Magazine that "unity without a sense of justice, equality, and fairness is just a toxic mob mentality"While fewer people likely tuned in to Gorman’s interview with Obama, as Dr. Stephen Mack states on his blog about public intellectuals, "The measure of public intellectual work is not whether the people are listening, but whether they’re hearing things worth talking about." And there is not a doubt in my mind that she is. The simple call for unity is what the nation needed to hear in the wake of the January 6th attack on American democracy. For those who take her words seriously, listening to her content beyond that speech demonstrates that unity does not trump the fight against inequity, although it is important in its own right. This clarified her framing ideology that she promotes with her platform from simple unity to “unity with purpose.” Gorman’s other work falls in line with this message. One section that sticks out from Lucent, a poem in her debut book Call Us What We Carry conveys this:
Our scars are the brightest
Parts of us.
***
The crescent moon,
The night’s lucent lesion.
We are felled oaks beneath it,
Branches full of empty.
Look closer.
What we share is more
Than what we’ve shed.
The first phrase of this section touches on the importance of not glazing over history, especially the most disgraceful moments that have permanently altered who we are as a nation and the negative impacts that still linger. The fight for justice relies on an acknowledgement of injustice, of the scars that were created and continue to be passed down. The next section is all about unity, that if you strip humanity back to the core, like oak trees lying horizontally on the forest floor, stripped of their branches and height, we have enough in common to connect with each other. All the poems in Call Us What We Carry, just as the title does, allude to humanity in first person plural, encouraging us to see ourselves within the scope of unification, while remaining mindful of our complicated and real history.
Amanda Gorman’s impact on society continues. Her presence, as a young woman, a black woman, as a highly successful writer, is an inspiration to many. In school, the only poetry I was taught about was either translated from Latin, dating back to the Roman Empire, or Shakespeare’s sonnets. Although I had a passion for reading and writing in grade school, studying the excellence of dead people who spoke in a barely digestible form of English did not foster an environment where I could picture myself as a successful poet. I did not think there could be new poets growing up in the 21st century, since it was always framed as a medium dominated by old men. Gorman also speaks proudly about her Black ancestry, describing herself as a “skinny Black girl descended from slaves” and speaking passionately about struggles her community faces such as police brutality. Her incorporation of social issues into her art spreads awareness of important matters into new spheres and inspires others to do the same. Furthermore, the rhythm, delivery, and gestures that she makes while reciting her poetry pay homage to the “call and response traditions of Black sermons and protest changes.” In doing so, she forces the world to acknowledge the power and legitimacy of Black culture, and inspires other Black artists to stay authentic and not assimilate their voices.
Amanda Gorman is unusual. She is unusually good at poetry and has been able to build a platform to encourage unity and inspire her audience to be creative and be catalysts for change in their own medium. She has gone from being unable to pronounce the letter ‘R’ correctly to having presidential aspirations. To those who listen, Gorman has a lot of important things to say, so if you haven't already, I suggest you start listening.