A Miami elementary school banned students from reading a poem known to have been read at Biden’s inauguration – with the complaining parent mistaking the young black author for Oprah Winfrey.
The Miami Herald reported that a parent at the Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes objected to Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb.
They justified their complaint in a form shared by Gorman, 25, writing that the work was “non-educational and indirectly contains hate messages”. (sic)
The complainant goes on to add that the widely praised work “could confuse and indoctrinate students”.
They also misidentified 69-year-old Oprah Winfrey as the author of the poem Gorman famously read during Biden’s inauguration in January 2021.
It is unclear what exactly offended the parents. There are no swear words in The Hill We Climb. It references Gorman’s slave ancestors and also targets Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the 2020 election to Biden.
A review board made up of school staff eventually concluded that four of the five titles were better suited for middle school children and will now be placed in the middle school section of the library.
Amanda Gorman, then 22, reads her poem The Hill We Climb at the inauguration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris in 2021
The parents wrote that the book was not suitable for any school and that its purpose was “to confuse and indoctrinate the students.”
The parent who complained about Gorman’s poem misidentified the work’s author as Oprah Winfrey
The ban only affects the one school where a parent of two students complained that the reading materials contained “indirect hate messages” and were part of an attempt to indoctrinate children.
In response to the news that her book was ripped from elementary school shelves, Gorman released a statement to her Instagram:
‘I’m burned out. Due to a parent’s complaint, my opening poem, The Hill We Climb, was banned from an elementary school in Miami-Dade County, Florida.”
She went on to say that book bans have increased in the US and that “all it takes to remove these works from our libraries and schools is one objection.” And to be clear, most banned works are by authors who fighting to make it onto bookshelves for generations. Most of these censored works are from queer and non-white voices.”
She wrote that banning her poem was a way of “depriving children of the chance to find their voice in literature,” which in turn is “a violation of their right to free thought and expression.”
She added that her publisher, Penguin Random House, has joined a lawsuit in Florida challenging book restrictions like those at the Bob Graham Education Center.
Responding to news that her book had been removed from an elementary school library, Gorman announced that her publisher had joined a lawsuit in Florida challenging the right of parents to dictate what their child sees at school is inappropriate or not
Elementary school students at the Bob Graham Education Center have been banned from reading the Amanda Gorman poem
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has tried to prevent children from reading material he deems inappropriate, but has denied he banned books.
The legislature, which is launching its 2024 presidential bid on Wednesday night, tried to target books on gender and sexuality, but other books have also been the subject of complaints.
It is not clear exactly what part of Gorman’s poem the parents were objecting to. The work contains lines that refer to an “unfinished” nation, but also to a “force” that could “shatter” democracy.
“Somehow we have survived and lived through a nation that is not broken / but simply unfinished. “We, the heirs of a country and a time / when a skinny black girl / is descended from slaves and raised by a single mother / can dream of becoming president / only to catch herself reciting for it” , says a stanza of Gorman’s poem.
It continues: “We have seen a force that would destroy our nation instead of dividing it.” / Would destroy our country if it meant delaying democracy. / And this attempt almost succeeded. / But while democracy may be periodically delayed, / it can never be permanently defeated.’
Harvard-educated Gorman’s reading at the inauguration was widely acclaimed and launched her writing and modeling career.
