Editor's note: Like many people across the country, we at 2e News were blown away by 22-year-old Amanda Gorman's recitation of her poem at the presidential inauguration this week. In printing an article about Gorman, we do not mean to suggest that Ms. Gorman is or isn't twice-exceptional, only to celebrate her clearly exceptional contribution to our nation's discourse at this critical time in history. She is a testament to the power and promise of our young generations.
There’s a new day in America and its first light has come from the shining words of 22-year old Amanda Gorman. Among the many memorable parts of President Joe Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, Gorman’s recitation of her poem, “The Hill We Climb,” stood out as a ringing clarion call of hope.
After seeing Gorman’s reading at the Library of Congress of her poem, “In This Place: An American Lyric,” First Lady Jill Biden encouraged her husband, then President-elect Biden, to invite the Los Angeles native and Harvard grad to give what many people now praise as one of the great inaugural poems. “The Hill We Climb” stands alongside Robert Frost’s “The Gift Outright” (John F. Kennedy) and Maya Angelou’s “On the Pulse of Morning” (Bill Clinton) as not only capturing the fraught present moment but inspiring a fresh outlook on the future.
“Young people like her are proof that ‘there is always light, if only we're brave enough to see it; if only we're brave enough to be it,’” tweeted former president Barack Obama, quoting Gorman’s poem. Her fellow Angeleno, actress and director Regina King, added, “You captured the history of this country and what democracy should mean beautifully.”
Gorman discovered her poetic voice after being diagnosed with an audi...
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