Amanda Gorman says a security guard followed her home Friday night. The 22-year-old poet, who became the youngest inaugural poet in US history when she performed at President Joe Biden’s inauguration earlier this year, said the guard said she looked “ suspicious. ”
“A security guard followed me on my walk home tonight,” Gorman wrote on Twitter. He demanded if I lived there because ‘you look suspicious’. I showed my keys and buzzed myself into my building. He left without apologies. This is the reality of black girls: one day you are called an icon, the next a threat. “
In a follow-up tweet, she wrote: “In a way he was right. I AM A THREAT: A threat to injustice, inequality and ignorance. Anyone who speaks the truth and walks with hope is a clear and deadly danger to the forces that to be. “
Gorman recited her poem The Hill We Climb on the steps of the United States Capitol during Mr. Biden on January 20. She told “CBS this morningAnthony Mason that she prepared for the big moment as she would prepare for any other gig.
“One of the preparations I always do when I perform is to say a mantra to myself, ‘I am the daughter of black writers. We are descended from freedom fighters who broke chains and changed the world. ‘”
The original composition was based on her own experience, as “a skinny black girl descended from slaves” who dreams of “becoming president,” as well as the recent uprising at the Capitol, Gorman told Mason.