Inspired by Omar, the Guardian and Pen America asked writers to share inspiring lines from poems about overcoming hate – and readers to submit theirs
Last week, after a chant of “send her back” broke out at a Trump rally in North Carolina, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar responded by posting some lines from the Maya Angelou poem Still, like air, I’ll rise on Twitter.
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
-Maya Angelou https://t.co/46jcXSXF0B
“I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them.
However, I have heard that sometimes you have to deal
“come celebrate
with me that everyday
something has tried to kill me
and has failed.”
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
Living every day in the
presence of those who
All year, I have worked
against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck
“You can’t trust them,” one officer says.
I’m prepared to bet he is from Brooklyn.
There is no response from the other one. He is not angry,
just sad that I now work in his country.
This quiet American has pasted a sheet with Hindi alphabets
on his left, on his right there is a proverb from Punjab.
“You just can’t trust them,” the first one repeats,
shaking his wrist to loosen his heavy watch.
The one sitting down now raises his weary eyes.
“Did you, the first time you went there,
intend to come back?”
“Wait a minute,” I say, “did you get a visa
when you first went to the moon? Fuck the moon,
tell me about Vietnam. Just how precise
were your plans there, you asshole?”
