My mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
AMANDA GORMANWhen 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.
More Amanda Gorman Quotes
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I love Black poets. I love that as a Black girl, I get to participate in that legacy. So that’s Yusef Komunyakaa, Sonia Sanchez, Tracy K. Smith, Phillis Wheatley.
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No matter how you say it, the hill we climb is a hill we climb together.
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I did a lot of sitting back and thinking about what I wanted for myself and what I wanted for my country: more unity, more support for the arts and more opportunities for young writers from marginalized groups.
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Through poetry we shall catch the conscience of a nation.
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Poetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
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Whenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
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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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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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Truth is to act out of the best of ourselves.
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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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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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The oration of poetry, I consider to be its own art form and tradition.
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I think we run into issues when our online brands are not rooted in who we are, and I think we need to have explicit discussions with ourselves about who we want to be, what we want to represent, and how we want to express that.
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My Instagram doesn’t cover my insecurities, my lack of self-confidence, that week I spent crying, there’s a question of whether I should be sharing that online.
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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.
AMANDA GORMAN