Amanda Gorman is the young American poet and activist from inspiring everyone with her work on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalization, as well as the African diaspora. Gorman is the first person to be named National Youth Poet Laureate.
Amanda Gorman is a Los Angeles native who was raised by her mother, a teacher named Joan Wicks, with her two siblings. She has a twin sister, Gabrielle, who is an activist. Gorman has said she grew up in an environment with limited television access. She had a speech impediment as a child.
Read Also: KOKOnista Of The Day: Yewande Biala Is The Melanin Beauty With Brain Standing Up To Bullies And Racists
She has described her young self as a “weird child” who enjoyed reading and writing and was encouraged by her mother. Gorman has said she has an auditory processing disorder and is hypersensitive to sound.
Gorman attended New Roads, a private school in Santa Monica, for grades K-12. As a senior, she received a Milken Family Foundation college scholarship and studied sociology at Harvard College. While at Harvard, she became the first person to be named national youth poet laureate in April 2017. She was chosen from five finalists.
Gorman said she was inspired to become a youth delegate for the United Nations in 2013 after watching a speech by Pakistani Nobel Prize laureate Malala Yousafzai. Gorman was chosen as the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles in 2014. She published the poetry book The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough in 2015.
Gorman is the founder of the nonprofit organisation One Pen One Page, which runs a youth writing and leadership program. In 2017, she became the first youth poet to open the literary season for the Library of Congress, and she has read her poetry on MTV. The Morgan Library and Museum acquired her poem “In This Place (An American Lyric)” and displayed it in 2018 near works by Elizabeth Bishop. In 2017, Gorman became the first author to be featured on XQ Institute’s Book of the Month, a monthly giveaway to share inspiring Gen Z’s favorite books. She wrote a tribute for black athletes for Nike and has a book deal with Viking Children’s Books to write two children’s picture books.
In 2017, Gorman said she wants to run for president in 2036.
Her art and activism focus on issues of oppression, feminism, race, and marginalisation, as well as the African diaspora.
She read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at Joe Biden‘s inauguration on January 20, 2021, and is the youngest poet to read at a presidential inauguration. After January 6, 2021, she amended her poem’s wording to address the storming of the United States Capitol.
Photo Credit: Getty
