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 hyperbole was to think of Simone Biles, one of several star Black women athletes cited by the host.
The Weight of Expectations on Talented Black Women
In Simone’s case, I worry about her breaking her neck as she performs gravity-defying feats like the Yurchenko double pike vault. I also considered the emotional and psychological stress Simone Biles carried into Tokyo.
The star athlete accepted her ‘responsibilities’ to her team, to the entire USA Olympics, to fans, to Black women TV hosts who advance theories around her superwoman status. But in her own words Simone Biles also found all the adulation and expectations debilitating to her need to be at peak performance. In the simplest of words, Biles said she wasn’t having any fun anymore. No longer performing for herself, she is deluged with the expectations of everyone else.
"This Olympic Games, I wanted it to be for myself. But I was still doing it for other people. It hurts my heart that doing what I love has been kind of taken away from me to please other people."
In addition — and really important — is that Biles has said consistently that her return to the gym, especially after the COVID-19 pandemic delayed these Olympic Games, was made only more difficult by her having to “represent an organization that failed her and her fellow survivors in the wake of the Larry Nassar abuse revelations.”
In her effort to hold USA Olympics accountable, Biles must swallow her own anger and disgust with how the Nassar case was [not] handled. This reality is a huge barrier to achieving peak performance goals.
There’s no concern on AOC’s part that Amanda Gorman will break her neck reciting poetry. But she, too, is carrying massive expectations among progressives of all skin colors who find her words so uplifting. Gorman channels the voices and expectations of her ancestors and all the racial justice activists who came before her. She’s carrying and embracing the sentiments of a young generation determined to change the world. Gorman tells Porter Edit:
“There is something unifying in us being YOUNG and fresh-faced but, at the same time, we have BECOME somewhat emblematic of our industries. We are the new GENERATION – and you’d better watch out”
We hear you Amanda Gorman. Just be sure to take care of yourself out there. The artistic spirit can be vulnerable while it’s also being heroic. ~ Anne
