A "hill we will conquer" says poet Amanda Gorman

Echo opinion published in The New York Times, by Amanda Holpuch.

Amanda Gorman, who in 2021, became the youngest inaugural poet in United States history when she spoke at President Biden’s swearing-in, said she was “gutted” this week after a Florida school said the poem she recited that day was inappropriate for its youngest students.

The Miami-Dade County school district said that one of its schools, the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, which educates children from prekindergarten through eighth grade, had determined that the poem, “The Hill We Climb,” was more appropriate for middle school students.

Ms. Gorman, now 25, said in a statement on Instagram on Tuesday that she wrote the poem “so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment.”

Amanda Gorman "The Hill We Climb"

“Ever since, I’ve received countless letters and videos from children inspired by The Hill We Climb to write their own poems,” she said. “Robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”

The Miami-Dade County Public Schools, the nation’s fourth-largest school district by enrollment, said in an emailed statement that while the poem had been moved to a different section of the library at the Bob Graham Education Center, “no literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed.”

“It was determined at the school that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better suited for middle school students and it was shelved in the middle school section of the media center,” the school district said. “The book remains available in the media center.”

The challenge to Ms. Gorman’s poem, which was reported by The Miami Herald, came from Daily Salinas, a parent of two students at the school, who complained in March about it and four other titles, according to records provided to The New York Times by The Florida Freedom to Read Project, an advocacy group that opposes efforts to ban and restrict access to books in the state.

The complaint against “The Hill We Climb” lists its author as Oprah Winfrey, not Ms. Gorman, and says that the function of the work is to “cause confusion and indoctrinate students.” Ms. Winfrey wrote the foreword to a hardcover edition of Ms. Gorman’s poem. Ms. Salinas could not immediately be reached on Wednesday.

The other works that were challenged were “The ABCs of Black History” by Rio Cortez, “Cuban Kids” by George Ancona, “Love to Langston” by Tony Medina and “Countries in the News: Cuba,” by Kieran Walsh. The reasons cited for opposing the other works include “indoctrination” and critical race theory, a graduate-level academic framework for understanding racism in the United States that focuses mainly on institutions and systems.

A committee of school representatives, including teachers, administrators, a guidance counselor and a library media specialist, decided that “Countries in the News: Cuba” could remain on the shelves. The other titles, like Ms. Gorman’s poem, were moved to shelves for middle schools students.

On Wednesday morning, Daniella Levine Cava, the Miami-Dade County mayor, invited Ms. Gorman to do a reading of the poem in the county.

And this opinion letter in response:  One parent in Florida objects to Amanda Gorman’s marvelous poem “The Hill We Climb,” and the school board folds like a coward by limiting the access to it. A freedom restricted is a freedom denied.  Ted Loewenberg in San Francisco

The Hill We Climb by Amanda Gorman published in the Harvard Gazette

‘The Hill We Climb’

When day comes we ask ourselves,
‘where can we find light in this never-ending shade,’
the loss we carry,
a sea we must wade?
We’ve braved the belly of the beast.
We’ve learned that quiet isn’t always peace,
and the norms and notions
of what just is
isn’t always just-ice.

And yet the dawn is ours
before we knew it,
somehow we do it.
Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed
a nation that isn’t broken
but simply unfinished.
We, the successors of a country and a time
where a skinny Black girl
descended from slaves and raised by a single mother
can dream of becoming president
only to find herself reciting for one.
And yes, we are far from polished,
far from pristine,
but that doesn’t mean we are
striving to form a union that is perfect.
We are striving to forge a union with purpose,
to compose a country committed to all cultures, colors, characters, and
conditions of man.

And so we lift our gazes not to what stands between us
but what stands before us.
We close the divide because we know, to put our future first,
we must first put our differences aside.
We lay down our arms
so we can reach out our arms
to one another.

We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true:
That even as we grieved, we grew;
that even as we hurt, we hoped;
that even as we tired, we tried;
that we’ll forever be tied together, victorious,
not because we will never again know defeat
but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision
that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree
and no one shall make them afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time
then victory won’t lie in the blade
but in all the bridges we’ve made.
That is the promise to glade,
the hill we climb
if only we dare it,
because being American is more than a pride we inherit —
it’s the past we step into
and how we repair it.
We’ve seen a force that would shatter our nation
rather than share it
would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy.
And this effort very nearly succeeded.
But while democracy can be periodically delayed,
it can never be permanently defeated.
In this truth,
in this faith we trust,
for while we have our eyes on the future,
history has its eyes on us.
This is the era of just redemption
we feared at its inception.
We did not feel prepared to be the heirs
of such a terrifying hour
but within it we found the power
to author a new chapter,
to offer hope and laughter to ourselves.
So while once we asked,
‘how could we possibly prevail over catastrophe,’
now we assert,
‘how could catastrophe possibly prevail over us?’
We will not march back to what was
but move to what shall be:
a country that is bruised but whole,
benevolent but bold,
fierce, and free.
We will not be turned around
or interrupted by intimidation
because we know our inaction and inertia
will be the inheritance of the next generation.
Our blunders become their burdens.
But one thing is certain:
If we merge mercy with might,
and might with right,
then love becomes our legacy
and change our children’s birthright.
So let us leave behind a country
better than the one we were left with.
Every breath from my bronze-pounded chest,
we will raise this wounded world into a wondrous one.
We will rise from the gold-limned hills of the west,
we will rise from the windswept northeast
where our forefathers first realized revolution,
we will rise from the lake-rimmed cities of the midwestern states,
we will rise from the sunbaked south.
We will rebuild, reconcile, and recover
in every known nook of our nation and
every corner called our country,
our people diverse and beautiful will emerge,
battered and beautiful.
When day comes we step out of the shade,
aflame and unafraid.
The new dawn blooms as we free it.

For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it,
if only we’re brave enough to be it.