The New American Dream of Amanda Gorman’s ‘The Hill We Climb’
How the poet connects America’s past to its future.
Plenty of history was made on January 20, 2021. Plenty of firsts. Plenty of barriers broken. And while it’s easy to get swept up in the currents of politics that dominate our attention, there was another current flowing strong that day. National Youth Poet Laureate Amanda Gorman not only became the youngest poet to recite at a presidential inauguration, but did so with a fresh, vibrant vision of a new American Dream.
The American Dream has faced an identity crisis in recent decades as our visions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness evolve. This is not to say the American Dream has always been without controversy in the past; Langston Hughes addressed the very issue almost 100 years ago in his 1926 poem “I, Too.” But as America’s role on the world stage shifts, so have the interests of its citizens shifted from owning a plot of land they can call their own to earning status and seeking personal fortune. The medium of poetry itself has also undergone a recent transformation from a dying mode of expression to a renewed one — a transformation not lost on Gorman as she marches across history in “The Hill We Climb.”
Her poem embodies the American ideal of a melting pot as it blends modern language…
