Amanda Gorman is the real standout of Inauguration Day
Yesterday’s Inauguration of President Biden and Vice-President Harris is one of those rare moments that the entire world was watching at once.
I watched live from the BBC news app while I continued to work, unwilling to be ripped from my laptop but desperately wanting to witness history in the making.
Even though it was a considerably smaller affair than Inaugural ceremonies that we are used to, for obvious reasons. However, it remained a star-studded affair with many of the US political elite in attendance, including former Presidents and First ladies Barack and Michelle Obama, Bill and Hillary Clinton, George W. and Laura Bush as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Chief Justice John Roberts, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As with Inauguration tradition, both sides of the political spectrum are welcomed and encouraged to attend. Of course, many Republicans did like former President George W. Bush, Senate Majority (soon to be Minority) Leader Mitch McConnell, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Vice-President Mike Pence. There was one notable exception. No points for guessing who.
Beyond the political establishment though, Lady Gaga sang the US’s national anthem, beautifully if not a little like a Hunger Games tribute. While JLo did a rendition, that brought a tear to me, of Woody Guthrie’s ‘This Land Is Your Land’ with a beautiful inspired moment of the ‘Pledge of Allegiance’ in Spanish:
“Una nación bajo Dios, indivisible, con libertad y justicia para todos.”
which translates as:
“One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
In a contributor reflection for Empoword Journalism, I wrote:
“Watching President Biden and Vice-President Harris walk across the inauguration stage is the equivalent to the world drawing a sigh of relief. The four years ahead will be rife with division and uncertainty but you can tell that the US, if not the entire world, is grateful for this moment, no matter how fleeting it might be, to breathe again.”
This inauguration was already making history amidst a global pandemic, Donald Trump’s infamous administration which in the last month alone, has led to the insurrection of Capitol Hill, the sitting POTUS’s removal from Twitter and Trump’s second impeachment- another first for a US President.
In better news, Biden and Harris’s Inauguration was monumental in a positive way too. With Harris becoming the first Black and South Asian Vice President, her historic election leads a record number of women and people of colour in cabinet positions, the first Native American Cabinet Secretary, first openly gay cabinet member, first Latino Homeland Security Chief and the first woman National Intelligence Director. In other words, the most diverse and representative cabinet to date.
None of this was news heading into the Inauguration but there is something about watching history unfold in front of your very eyes that allows for reality to set in.
Yet what felt like a dream was Amanda Gorman, 22 and the youngest inaugural poet’s reading of her poem ‘The Hill We Climb’. I, like the rest of the world, have spoken about little else since I heard it.
A poem like this should be read aloud so that you might just be swept away by the hope in her words. I ask you to find yourself a quiet moment, lock yourself away from the rest of the world and just listen to her.
In the past 24 hours, I have read time and time again about what extraordinary insight she has at such a young age. Truthfully, I think bringing in her age as some kind of factor, does her talent a disservice. So many of us, go through life not being able to express ourselves or put words to the joy or the pain that we have experienced.
When you are a young black woman like Amanda Gorman is and have seen what she has seen- not just in the last four years but her entire life and her mother’s life and her mother before that. It is a marvel that she ever found the words.
For the longest time, I have distanced myself from poetry. I blame school honestly. How can we love something that we are tested on? Plus all the poems I read in school were about onions and scorned women. They were all printed on blank sheets of paper and we were instructed to analyse every inch of every line for meaning. Poems are meant to be heard, they are meant to felt.
Poems are meant to sound like that.
I have included the video recording but here is the transcript so that you can read along for yourselves.
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’s 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-limbed 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
and 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
