Nobody talks about society’s addiction to black trauma. How much more profitable it is to talk about pain than poems, depression than joy.
Like we don’t have feelings just bad experiences turned into songs of sorrows and spirituals of reaching heaven cause there can’t be no freedom here on Earth for Black people.
Maybe this world still doesn’t consider us human enough to be happy someone hand society a roadmap for getting to know black people.
Tell them they can find us laughing even when life is lifeing cracking jokes and turning sadness into praise. Tell them we are not just guns and gangs.
Our hope does not hang on by string on some cracked-out corner or trap house Tell them how we dream. Big Mama musta had mustard seeds underneath the mattress cause she moved mountains. Food and faith ain’t never been hard to find. We gone eat.
Talk about our love our sense of community our building our builders our beauty.
We’ve had a wild ride here in this country But it was not all bad.
Together, we forged a world of our own found solace in the cracks made meals from scraps and carved out our own sense of enjoyment and purpose.
Tell them about how the cells of a black woman saved the world and the genius of a Black man lit it up. Talk about how we bless everything we touch.
Tell the whole truth that we are not made up only of pain.
Joy lives here, too.
You can listen to this poem on TikTok and YouTube! I’m @yecheilyah on both.
Black History Facts is back! If you’ve been waiting for a signed copy, this is your chance to get your hands on it. We are back in stock. Go now to: https://www.blkhistorybook.com/.
You are fourteen, and despite the childish laughter— the one smoother than the fresh coat of love on a baby’s skin— your mothers must warn you that certain skin tones won’t allow you to flash open innocence.
You are not allowed to purchase candy, tell jokes, or ring the wrong doorbell.
Certain histories won’t let you forget the present or permit childhood to take advantage of your fingertips.
Responsibilities follow you home in warm booties, blankets, and prophecies. If you had known that your existence would give birth to a movement, long before your feet hit the ground. Before your mother’s pelvis danced against your father’s, and his kiss brushed upon her skin…
Did they tell you that you were born for this?
Did they tell you about the cries of Israel when they reached into the heavens like hands just as heavy as your parent’s hearts, knocking against the doors of heaven because too many of their prayers ended in question marks?
Did they tell you that you were destined for this?
That you had the freedom movement stamped to your backside like a receipt back to the soil.
Like your fathers had to spit their seed into a melody, an Amazing Grace and Birmingham Sunday, carving its lyrics and your names into the history books of our yet unborn.
And while you rest they march scripture on the bed of your misunderstood self.
Your written content your voice copy blog posts texts, captions the way you capture feeling on the page contextualize thought empower us through emotion breathe life into the human experience remind us what it feels like to live to remember minister to our memory and most sacred truths the way you poet your words, spoken or written is, power.
A historical document your grandchildren will one day cherish resist the urge to withhold words hold them like you once held your babies precious and true their bodies snug in the crook of your arm and the warmth of your chest Wrap your arms around this text: Your intellectual scholarship has merit.
Let it be a legacy for the next generation Gift them this birthright. So we may have a right to a better future. Let no one censor you into silence.
In her CNN interview with Anderson, Gorman spoke about the power of words and all the research that went into her poem, such as reviewing texts from poets of previous inaugurations and studying other orators like Frederick Douglass.
“I did a lot of research ever since I found out I was going to be the inaugural poet in late December. Really doing a deep literature dive of other orators.”
I highlight this because research is not a word we hear often associated with poetry, but the best poets do it. It is not only about stringing some rhymes together. The best poets are avid researchers, readers, and students.
While writing “The Hill We Climb,” the poet listened to music that helped put her “in a historic and epic mind-set,” including soundtracks from “The Crown,” “Lincoln,” “Darkest Hour,” and “Hamilton.”
“I wasn’t trying to write something in which those events were painted as an irregularity or different from an America that I know,” said Gorman of the events of January 6th. “America is messy. And I have to recognize that in the poem. I can’t ignore that or erase it.”
I think we can all agree that Maya Angelou had talent, but Angelou also studied the art. In her muteness, she listened to how people spoke, the inflection of their voices, the way their arms and hands moved. She listened to the black ministers and the melody of the preachers, musicians, and performers. She read books of all kinds, traveled to different countries, and learned other languages.
What is the lesson here?
Good poetry is a good study. It is more than the rhyme of a creative mind, but how that creativity can take elements of real life, history, and experience and weave it together with language that is so fluid and precise that it enters the heart and goes right down to the soul.
Lesson #2: When You Are Not Writing/Speaking, Read
In the five years, Angelou was mute, she read every book in the black school library and every book she could get from the white school library. She memorized James Weldon Johnson, Paul Lawerence Dunbar, Countee Cullen, and Langston Hughes. She memorized Shakespear, whole plays, and fifty sonnets. Angelou memorized Edgar Allen Poe and all the poetry.
When Angelou decided to speak, she had a lot to say and many ways to say it.
Gorman is also a reader.
“When she’s not watching cooking shows, Gorman copes with isolation by reading books to prepare her for that future. She picked up former President Obama’s “A Promised Land” the day it came out. She’s also reading Michel-Rolph Trouillot’s “Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History,” which interrogates long-standing historical narratives from the Haitian Revolution to the Alamo.”
Lesson #3: Learning from Others
I am not going to say that I agree with every lyric of Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb.” Still, I enjoyed the intelligence of the delivery, the poetic techniques used, the alliteration, and the metaphoric skill. I have listened to other poems of Amanda’s, and I love the sound of her voice and the movement of her hands at pivotal points. It is not overly dramatic but poised and elegant.
At the Roar, Grand Slam Gorman said, “The air smelled of Hollywood and desperation.” Gorman’s enunciation of words and clarity of speech speaks to her comprehension of the information. Rather from her speech impediment or the love of poetry, you can tell that Gorman has studied language, and it comes through beautifully in her speech.
Maya Angelou has one of the most powerful voices I had ever heard. We are so blessed that she did not stay silent! What I noticed about Angelou was how she did not limit her reading. Maya embraced different voices and cultures, and I believe this nurtured her perspective so that it stretched wide, and from her poetry, you can hear the wisdom of understanding shine through.
Lesson number three is perhaps the most important one of all.
You do not have to agree with everything someone says or does to learn from them. Remember that Yah spoke to Balaam through the mouth of a donkey. (Numb. 22:28)
Lol. These bitmojis are just funny to me
“I am the daughter of black writers. We are descended from freedom fighters who broke their chains and changed the world. They call me.”
The PBS Blog 