Just day’s before controversial Florida governor Ron DeSantis is expected to formally announce his 2024 presidential bid, his recent legislation, which focuses on eliminating LGBTQ literature in K-12 classrooms, has added several more works to its list of censored or banned works- including Amanda Gorman‘s 2020 Presidential Inauguration Poem, “The Hill We Climb.”
The removal of the work from Bob Graham Education Center in Miami Lakes, a Miami-area K-8 school, came after a parent of two students objected to five titles at the school. The complaint against “The Hill We Climb” cited “indirect hate messages” and indoctrination and was ultimately deemed inappropriate for elementary school students. (It will still be available in the high school library.)
The advocacy group PEN America reports that at least 175 books have been removed from school libraries throughout Florida in recent months following the passage of DeSantis-backed legislation.
A Harvard graduate, Gorman was the United States’ first national youth poet laureate. At 22 years old, she was the youngest poet in memory to read at a presidential inaugural ceremony. A full viewing of the poem’s reading by Gorman can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LZ055ilIiN4.
