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The Vital Power of Youth and Words: 22-year-old Poetess Amanda Gorman to Perform at Joe Biden’s Inauguration
A Rock, a River, a Tree
Maya Angelou, On The Pulse of Morning
Hosts of species long departed
Marked the mastodon,
The dinosaur, who left dried tokens
Of their sojourn here
Women Have Power: Let’s Hear Them
A conversation with Alyse Nelson, President and co-Founder of Vital Voices for Global Partnership. Co-editor of Vital Voices: 100 Women to Empower Other Women (Assouline)
Forget for a moment Joe Biden’s victory as President-elect and Donald Trump’s struggles with defeat, one of the main news from the 2020 American Presidential election is Senator Kamala Harris. For the first time in history, a woman—a Black, Asian woman—will become the first female Vice President of the United States. Harris will also rank first in line to succeed Joe Biden as President.
Besides the election of Kamala Harris, women seem to have taken center political stage whether it is in the United States or on the opposite side of the world.
Women actually played a key role in the 2020 American elections a mere 100 years after the 19th amendment of the American Constitution granting women’s suffrage was passed. Fast forward to 2020, 57% of women—and among them 90% of Black women—chose the Democratic candidate over the incumbent President, according to NBC News. Women also voted more than men (52%). In other words, they decided the Presidential outcome and chose Joe Biden although Donald Trump increased his base of white women voters.
Ahead of the Presidential election, another woman, Justice Amy Coney Barrett also made history and became the only the fifth woman to sit on the United States Supreme Court in 230 years. A woman Justice has replaced another one. While it surely seems to be a positive step for women’s empowerment and gender equality, succession might not be as simple as just having a woman leader succeeding another one. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the American champion of women’s rights; based on the 48-year old Justice Barrett’s past judicial positions show, the new Justice is not.
One Hundred Women to Inspire Us to Change
Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline)
On September 6, 2020, French philosopher Elisabeth Badinter wrote an editorial in Le Journal du Dimanche, one of France’s main Sunday’s paper to denounce a dangerous post #metoo radical neo-feminism, which she says transforms all women into victims and all men into presumed aggressors. At the same moment in the United States, Assouline and the American foundation Vital Voices published a groundbreaking book with 100 portraits and texts of women ‘using their power to empower.’
Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exceptions.
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, lawyer and former Justice, United States Supreme Court
Their names are Ruth Bader Ginsburg (RBG passed away a few days after this article was published), Melinda Gates, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, Nancy Pelosi, Michelle Bachelet, Geena Davis and Jacinda Ardern. Some have led countries, some head a foundation, one is a US Senator, while another is one of the most powerful judges in the United States. The book also features Panmela Castro, Xiye Bastida, Yin Myo Su, Hindu Oumarou Ibrahim, Andeisha Farid, Amani Ballour, and Tarana Burke. Less known in the Western media, they too run foundations, corporations, paint large murals, engage in politics, and transform the healthcare delivery landscape of their communities.
There are 100 of them in this book edited by Alyse Nelson, President and co-founder of Vital Voices Global Partnerships, along with Hillary Rodham Clinton, Melanne Verveer, and Madeleine Albright. This Washington-based non for-profit organization works with women in 182 countries to help them become professionally empowered, visible and heard. One hundred portraits painted by Gayle Kabaker, one of the greatest American illustrators, known especially for her New Yorker covers. One hundred women who share their visions, their ambitions, and raise their voices. They could be a thousand, a hundred thousand, millions. In fact, these 100 women leaders, activists, lawyers, politicians, entrepreneurs, diplomats, financiers, biologists, journalists, athletes and artists are de facto ambassadors of half of the world’s population.
Amanda Gorman looks a bit younger than her age of 22 says, and at 22, the Los Angeles born activist has already reached heights that very few people have. A Harvard University student, she made her way as a Youth Delegate to the United Nations in 2013 after listening Pakistani survivor Malala Yousafzai speak. Her own words made her poet. She became the first National Youth Poet Laureate in 2017 and ambitions to run for President in the United States sometimes.
A young poet? Think again. Arthur Rimbaud was a teenager when he composed some of his most famous poems.
Gorman is a poet, an activist and a social entrepreneur. Period. She is a leader whose voice is already vital. She created a youth writing program, read poetry on MTV and at the Library of Congress, and she just authored the foreword of Vital Voices: 100 Women Using Their Power to Empower (Assouline). No wonder her portrait, created by Gayle Kabaker, made the cover of a book that includes Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, European Central Bank President Christine Lagarde, Fashion Designer Diane Von Furstenberg, and Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
No surprise either: her foreword is a poem. It is about words after all, and sharing them.