In Defense of Amanda Gorman

The low-key misogyny of calling women “gifted”

National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman reads her work, “An American Lyric,” at the inaugural reading of Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith, September 13, 2017. Photo by Shawn Miller. Public domain.

The world was introduced to US National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman on January 20th this year, when she read her Inaugural Poem The Hill We Climb to commemorate the swearing in of the 46th President and the 49th Vice President of the United States of America.

I don’t know Amanda Gorman, but I know one of the organizations that has played a pivotal role in her development as a poet, WriteGirl. I know WriteGirl because I volunteered as a mentor for them when I lived in LA in the early 2000s, and even worked for the organization for a while as a grant writer.

Personally, I think every American would feel proud of Amanda Gorman: she is the product of America’s toughest realities (a black girl, born & raised in Watts by a single mom) and it’s best opportunities (college scholarship, acceptance to Harvard) to come to embody the one thing the country has always stood for at it’s very heart: promise.

I know, though, that Gorman holds a very special place of pride for WriteGirl Executive Director Keren Taylor, Associate Director Allison Deegan, and all the mentors and mentees of WriteGirl, and deservedly so. I follow Keren on Twitter, and it’s been a joy to watch her cheer Gorman on. Until I saw this tweet: