Amanda Gorman's 'Call Us What We Carry', Simone Biles and Weight of Expectations
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Dec. 7, 2021 Publication Date for ‘Call Us What We Carry’ by Amanda Gorman
Amanda Gorman, featured this week’s cover story for Net-a-Porter, will release a book of poetry ‘Call Us What We Carry’ on December 7, 2021. The 80-page collection, formerly titled ‘The Hill We Climb and Other Poems’, will include her famed 2021 President Joe Biden inaugural poem, while exploring new “themes of identity, grief, and memory.” According to the publisher Viking Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, Gorman will narrate the audiobook, which will be published concurrently by Penguin Random House Audio.
The Lyrics of Hope
Gorman’s poetic elegance, rich with connection and insights into America’s deepest wounds and achievements, will continue to express itself in a hopeful way in ‘Call Us What We Carry’.
Gorman, who was appointed the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017 and was the United States’ youngest inaugural poet, said: “I wrote ‘Call Us What We Carry’ as a lyric of hope and healing. I wanted to pen a reckoning with the communal grief wrought by the pandemic. It’s been the hardest thing I’ve ever written, but I knew it had to be. For me, this book is a receptacle, a time capsule both made by and for its era. What is poetry if not a mirror for our present and a message for our future?”
In Monday’s Net-a-Porter interview, Amanda Gorman added energy and direct purpose to the definition of being a poet. “I often call it ‘poeting’ because, for me, it is to get involved in a movement. I think back to Audre Lorde, who was so wise in saying that it’s the poets who create a language for pains, emotions and solutions.”
Amanda Gorman and Simone Biles
It’s impossible for AOC not to reflect on Amanda Gorman and Simone Biles in the same thought bubble. Gorman spoke on Twitter to Tuesday’s news that The GOAT Simone Biles was dropping out of the team competition at the Tokyo Olympics, over mental health concerns.
Retweeting Meena Harris, Amanda rolled many current events related to Biles’ life into one analytical opinion, and we’ll leave the analysis on Gorman’s Twitter feed.
What is relevant to me about the two women’s mutual stardom is the incredible weight it puts on their shoulders as humans, as women, and as Black women who have avidly grabbed the torch of leadership in America.
I heard a Black woman host on MSNBC declare last week that Black women hold up half the world.
My response to her staggering mathematical hyperbole was to think of Simone Biles, one of several star Black women athletes cited by the host. The pressure on Biles and Gorman comes from people — and especially women — of every skin color. There are MANY white women who think the world of both young women. Of course Black women are especially proud and thrilled with their success. But it seems unwise to build such territorial walls around the best of humanity that a wide swath of humanity can’t celebrate them.
