Speaker

The poem “The Hill We Climb” by Amanda Gorman is written in the first-person plural. The “we” which the speaker repeatedly mentions throughout the poem refers first to the African Americans. This is stated in the last line of the first stanza: 

“We, the successors of a country and a time where a skinny Black girl descended from slaves and raised by a single mother can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one” (l. 10). 

The speaker strongly identifies with her own roots, and finds meaning in the past, connecting it to the present. Therefore, we can say that the speaker plays an active role in the poem, both by herself as an inauguration poet, as well as a part of the larger “we”, frequently repeated throughout the lyrical t...