When you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
AMANDA GORMANWhen you’re someone who’s lived a life where certain resources were scarce, you always feel like abundance is forbidden fruit.
AMANDA GORMANI 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.
AMANDA GORMANYour daily challenge to not be like a boss, but the boss, in all things you.
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.
AMANDA GORMANWriting 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.
AMANDA GORMANI don’t want it to be something that becomes a cage, where to be a successful Black girl, you have to be Amanda Gorman and go to Harvard. I want someone to eventually disrupt the model I have established.
AMANDA GORMANWhenever I listen to songs, I rewrite them in my head.
AMANDA GORMANWhat a day. What a life. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you
AMANDA GORMANI 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.
AMANDA GORMANI was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays.
AMANDA GORMANI try to approach reading in front of millions of people as I would reading in somebody’s living room.
AMANDA GORMANMy mom wanted to make sure I was prepared to grow up with Black skin in America.
AMANDA GORMANWhat 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 GORMANOne 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 GORMANPoetry and language are often at the heartbeat of movements for change.
AMANDA GORMANPoetry 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.
AMANDA GORMAN