After a chant of “send her back” broke out at Donald Trump’s rally in North Carolina last week, the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar responded by posting several lines from the Maya Angelou poem Still I 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 — Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019

The Guardian and Pen America asked a number of writers and poets including Min Jin Lee, Gregory Pardlo and Andrew Solomon to share favorite lines from poetry and literature about overcoming hatred.

We also asked you, our readers, to share favorite lines. What follows is a selection of your submissions.

“I don’t need your praise

to survive. I was here first,

before you were here, before

you ever planted a garden.

And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon

are left, and the sea, and the wide field.



I will constitute the field.” – excerpt from Witchgrass by Louise Glück

“We grow up forgetting

our incidental placements

become fond of whatever

bread and religion we are fed.” – excerpt from I Didn’t Ask For My Parents by Sholeh Wolpé

The Nobel peace prize winner Martin Luther King Jr and his wife, Coretta, arrive to deliver the traditional address at the University of Oslo on 11 December 1964. Photograph: Anonymous/AP

“I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.”

– excerpt from Martin Luther King Jr’s Nobel peace prize acceptance speech

“I, too, sing America. I am the darker brother.

They send me to eat in the kitchen

When company comes,

But I laugh,

And eat well,

And grow strong. Tomorrow,

I’ll be at the table

When company comes.” – excerpt from I, Too by Langston Hughes