Poet Amanda Gorman's poem The Hill We Climb is among the works banned in Miami-Dade County schools after a parent complained that the poem makes racial slurs, sends an indirect hate message, and promotes gender ideology, according to the Miami Herald .
Poet Amanda Gorman (23 years old)
Poet Amanda Gorman released a statement on Twitter on May 23 saying: "I am heartbroken. Due to a parent's complaint, my debut poem - The Hill We Climb - has been banned at an elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida."
"Most of the banned works are by authors who have fought for generations to get their work on the shelves. The majority of these censored books are by non-white authors. I wrote The Hill We Climb so that all young people can see themselves in a historical moment... Taking away the opportunity to find their voice in literature is a violation of children's freedom of expression," the 23-year-old writer continued.
Cover of the poetry collection The Hill We Climb
Amanda Gorman also mentioned that Penguin Random House recently teamed up with PEN America to file a lawsuit against the Escambia County School Board in Florida. Penguin Random House and PEN America are asking a federal court to put banned books back on library shelves.
Along with Gorman's poem, the parent also made similar observations in the books The ABCs of Black History, Cuban Kids, Countries in the News Cuba and Love to Langston .
The poetry collection The Hill We Climb topped the weekly fiction bestseller list in the US in April 2021. The collection has a foreword by "Queen of Media" Oprah Winfrey.
The poem The Hill We Climb opens with the following lines:
When the day comes, we ask ourselves,
"Where can we find light in this everlasting darkness?
The loss we carry,
a sea we must wade through?".
...
We, the heirs of a country and a time where a skinny black girl whose ancestors were slaves and raised by a single mother could dream of one day meeting the president just to read him poetry…
Amanda Gorman read the poem The Hill We Climb at President Joe Biden's inauguration, continuing a tradition that includes famous poets reading poetry at presidential inaugurations such as Robert Frost - JFKennedy (1961), Maya Angelou - Barack Obama (2009).
In her five-minute poem, Amanda Gorman called for healing and unity. She also celebrated the beauty of America’s racial diversity and urged Americans to use this opportunity to make the country more prosperous.
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