Poet speaks out after one parent’s complaint leads Florida school to bar students from reading her most famous poem

MIAMI -- A nationally known poet said Tuesday she is “gutted” after learning that a school in Miami-Dade barred elementary school children from reading her poem and three other library titles following the complaint of a parent.

Amanda Gorman — the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history — recited the poem, “The Hill We Climb,” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden on Jan. 20, 2021. Gorman, now 25 and a Harvard graduate, is an award-winning writer based in Los Angeles.

“Book bans aren’t new,” said Gorman, in a statement shared on Twitter. “Often all it takes to remove these works from our libraries and schools is a single objection.”

Gorman, a Black woman, added: “Most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on the bookshelves. The majority of these censored works are by queer and non-white voices.”

Her poem celebrates the United States not as a perfect union, but as an unfinished nation that yearns for equity and inclusion.

An excerpt of the poem reads:

Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed

a nation that isn’t broken,

but simply unfinished.

Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, a Democrat, on Wednesday invited Gorman to read her work in the Miami area.

On Monday, the Miami Herald reported that a review committee at Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, a Miami-Dade K-8 public school, determined that the poem and three other titles, “The ABCs of Black History,” “Cuban Kids” and “Love to Langston,” were “better suited” for middle school students and would be shelved in the middle school section of the media center.

One book, “Countries in the News: Cuba,” would remain available for all students in the media center.

The school committee — composed of three teachers, a library media specialist, a guidance counselor and the school’s principal, among others — took up the issue after a parent of two students at the school, Daily Salinas, objected to the books, saying they included references of critical race theory, “indirect hate messages,” gender ideology and indoctrination, according to records obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project and shared with the Miami Herald.

Tuesday night, Miami-Dade County Schools argued “no literature had been banned or removed.” Staff said books were shelved in the middle school section of the media center and remain available there.

“I wrote ‘The Hill We Climb’ so all young people could see themselves in a historical moment,” Gorman said. “Robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”

Gorman’s publisher, Penguin Random House, joined PEN America, a nonprofit that has been tracking book bans and advocates for literary freedoms, in a federal lawsuit against Florida’s Escambia County School District and its School Board, contending they violated the First Amendment in removing 10 books from school library shelves. Among the books removed: “The Bluest Eye” by Toni Morrison, “The Perks of Being a Wallflower” by Stephen Chbosky, “The Nowhere Girls” by Amy Reed and “Lucky” by Alice Sebold.

“Together, this is a hill we won’t just climb, but a hill we will conquer,” Gorman said.