The 22-year-old Harvard University student became the youngest poet to ever read at a presidential inauguration, during Joe Biden’s January 20th, 2020 swearing ceremony as America’s 46th president.
In her poem, Gorman described herself as “a skinny black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother [who] can dream of becoming president, only to find her self reciting for one”.
Amanda was born in Los Angeles in 1998. She had a speech impediment as a child – an affliction she shares with America’s new president.
“It’s made me the performer that I am and the storyteller that I strive to be,” she said in a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times.
“When you have to teach yourself how to say sounds [and] be highly concerned about pronunciation, it gives you a certain awareness of sonics, of the auditory experience.”
Gorman became LA’s youth poet laureate at 16.
3 years later, while studying sociology at Harvard, she became National Youth Poet Laureate.
She published her first book, The One for Whom Food Is Not Enough, in 2015 which has now become Amazon best selling book of 2021.
