One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.
AMANDA GORMANI grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ‘hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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I am the daughter of Black writers who are descended from Freedom Fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.
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One of the most rewarding moments of my career is when I’m speaking to a child who tells me they have the same speech impediment that I had to overcome and that they’re going to keep writing or sharing their voice after hearing my story.
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Give us the ballot, and we will no longer have to worry the federal government about our basic rights.
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I have to interweave my poetry with purpose. For me, that purpose is to help people, and to shed a light on issues that have far too long been in the darkness.
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We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace and the norms and notions of what just is, isn’t always justice.
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Writing wasn’t just a form of expression. It was a form of pathology by embarking on spoken word over and over and over again and reciting my poems.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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To hone my voice, I read everything, from books to cereal boxes, three times: once for fun, the second time to learn something new about the writing craft, and the third time was to improve that piece.
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I try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.
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If a woman doesn’t give herself permission, who will?
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I close my eyes and I am with this army of young women standing in a line and I imagine us walking forward together.
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As a young black woman, I notice at times in the mainstream media framing of the ‘me too’ movement you see a white female face or a white male face, and that type of questioning and interrogation needs to happen.
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The fight isn’t over – it’s just begun. It’s time to suit up for a battle that might determine the war.
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I am my own best mirror.
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I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch.
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The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
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What’s really funny about being National Youth Poet Laureate is that not everyone even knows it exists.
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I grew up at this incredibly odd intersection in Los Angeles, where it felt like the black ‘hood met black elegance met white gentrification met Latin culture met wetlands.
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We know. We believe. And we act, because it is our civic duty.
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Poetry has never been the language of barriers, it’s always been the language of bridges.
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As a public poet, people often don’t see the reality of my life.
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Poetry is interesting because not everyone is going to become a great poet, but anyone can be, and anyone can enjoy poetry, and it’s this openness, this accessibility of poetry that makes it the language of people.
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What contributed to my writing early on is how my mom encouraged it. She kept the TV off because she wanted my siblings and I to be engaged and active. So we made forts, put on plays, musicals, and I wrote like crazy.
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When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths.
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When they tell you to go back to where you come from, tell them proudly that this is where you come from.
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You don’t have to be a poet, you don’t have to be a politician or be in the White House to make an impact with your words. We all have this capacity to find solutions for the future.
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