‘Like air, I’ll rise': Ilhan Omar and others on words to conquer hate
Last week, after a chant of “send her back” broke out at a Trump rally in North Carolina, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar responded by posting some lines from the Maya Angelou poem Still, like air, I’ll rise on Twitter.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1151639430194532353 …
At this troubling moment in America, when vitriolic speech is dominating the conversation, the Guardian and PEN America reached out to high-profile writers and asked them to share inspiring lines from poems or literature about overcoming hatred and racism. Their submissions follow. We hope you, our readers, will add to this collection. You can submit ideas here and we will publish some of your suggestions.
Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo, an American poet whose book Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for poetry, chose the first stanza of Negro Hero, a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks published in 1945. The subject of the poem was Dorie Miller, a mess attendant in the US navy at the start of the second world war.
of any given day being your last one on earth
is too high, that we are more likely
to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood,
that we will probably just continue
with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house
with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared
creatures
over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell
our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight,
but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier
for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou https://twitter.com/jonfavs/status/1151639430194532353 …
At this troubling moment in America, when vitriolic speech is dominating the conversation, the Guardian and PEN America reached out to high-profile writers and asked them to share inspiring lines from poems or literature about overcoming hatred and racism. Their submissions follow. We hope you, our readers, will add to this collection. You can submit ideas here and we will publish some of your suggestions.
Gregory Pardlo
Gregory Pardlo, an American poet whose book Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for poetry, chose the first stanza of Negro Hero, a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks published in 1945. The subject of the poem was Dorie Miller, a mess attendant in the US navy at the start of the second world war.
“I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.Pardlo also suggested the poem Won’t You Celebrate with Me, by Lucille Clifton which includes the line
However, I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore
Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath.
(When I think of this, I do not worry about a few
Chipped teeth.)
“come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
Andrew Solomon
Andrew Solomon, a writer, activist and lecturer whose books include The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression which won the National Book Award, chose this line from Emma Lazarus’s letter collection Epistle to the Hebrews.“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
Min Jin Lee
Living every day in the
presence of those who
refuse to acknowledge
your humanity
takes great courage.
aren’t enough to protect you, that the likelihoodMira Jacob
Mira Jacob, the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations and the critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, chose an excerpt from the poem Who Will Survive in America? or 2017: A Horror Film by the poet Ashley M Jones, from her book Dark//Thing.
All year, I have worked
against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck
from sea to shining sea. Do you know what it means
to wake each morning, to realize your own brown hands
of any given day being your last one on earth
is too high, that we are more likely
to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood,
that we will probably just continue
with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house
with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared
creatures
over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell
our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight,
but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier
for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.
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