A school in Florida has banned its elementary-aged students from reading Amanda Gorman’s The Hill We Climb, the celebrated poem she recited at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
The elementary school is located in Miami-Dade County, Florida, and decided to ban students from accessing Gorman’s poem after a parent made a complaint.
Gorman posted an image of the complaint to Twitter, noting that it failed to specify what part of the poem it objected to, and also confused her with Oprah Winfrey.
The parent complaint said the poem was “not educational” and contained indirect “hate messages”.
“I’m gutted,” Gorman wrote in a statement on social media, saying book bans weren’t new but they were becoming much more common.
“So they ban my book from young readers, confuse me with @oprah, fail to specify what parts of my poetry they object to, refuse to read any reviews, and offer no alternatives…Unnecessary #bookbans like these are on the rise, and we must fight back.”
Gorman also added: “And let’s be clear: most of the forbidden works are by authors who have struggled for generations to get on bookshelves.”
“The majority of these censored works are by queer and non-white voices. I wrote ‘The Hill We Climb’ so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment. Ever since. I’ve received countless letters and videos from children inspired by ‘The Hill We Climb’ to write their own poems.”
Gorman first recited The Hill We Climb at the inauguration of President Biden, not long after the riots at the US Capitol in 2021. It was a deeply moving and hope-filled performance that referenced the political division in the United States and the importance of fighting for democracy.
The Bob Graham Education Center has said in a statement that the poem has been moved to a section that is only accessible to middle school students, not elementary school students.
Last week, Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis signed into law a new requirement for schools to pull books that have been challenged within five days of a complaint until they can be reviewed.
You can watch Amanda Gorman’s recital of the poem below.