Amanda Gorman says a security guard followed her home Friday night. The 22-year-old poet, who became the youngest opening poet in American history when she performed at President Joe Biden’s inauguration earlier this year, says the guard said she looked ‘suspicious’.
“A security guard took me home on my hike tonight,” Gorman wrote on Twitter. “He asked if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. I showed my keys and waved in my building. He’s gone, no excuse. This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next day a threat. ‘
In a follow-up tweet, she writes: “In a sense, he was right. I AM A THREAT: a threat to injustice, to inequality, to ignorance. Everyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is a obvious and fatal danger to the forces there. ‘
Gorman recited her poem “The hill we climb” on the steps of the American Capitol during the inauguration ceremony of Mr. Pray on January 20th.CBS this morning“Anthony Mason that she prepared for the big moment as for any other performance.
“One of the preparations I always make when I perform is that I say a mantra to myself: ‘I am the daughter of black writers. We are descended from freedom fighters who broke through chains and changed the world. They call me . ‘
The original composition drew on her own experience, as “a slender black girl descended from slaves” dreaming of “becoming president”, as well as the recent uprising at the Capitol, Gorman told Mason.