Inspired by Omar, the Guardian and Pen America asked writers to share inspiring lines from poems about overcoming hate – and readers to submit theirs

‘Like air, I’ll rise': Ilhan Omar and others on words to conquer hate

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.

Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) 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

At this troubling moment in America, when vitriolic speech is dominating the conversation, the Guardian and PEN America reached out to high-profile writers and asked them to share inspiring lines from poems or literature about overcoming hatred and racism. Their submissions follow. We hope you, our readers, will add to this collection. You can submit ideas here and we will publish some of your suggestions:

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Gregory Pardlo. Photograph: Jack Vartoogian/Getty Images/Getty Images

Gregory Pardlo

Gregory Pardlo, an American poet whose book Digest won the 2015 Pulitzer prize for poetry, chose the first stanza of Negro Hero, a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks published in 1945. The subject of the poem was Dorie Miller, a mess attendant in the US navy at the start of the second world war.

“I had to kick their law into their teeth in order to save them. However, I have heard that sometimes you have to deal Devilishly with drowning men in order to swim them to shore Or they will haul themselves and you to the trash and the fish beneath. (When I think of this, I do not worry about a few Chipped teeth.)

Pardlo also suggested the poem Won’t You Celebrate with Me, by Lucille Clifton which includes the line

“come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Andrew Solomon. Photograph: Sarah Lee/The Guardian

Andrew Solomon

Andrew Solomon, a writer, activist and lecturer whose books include The Noonday Demon: An Atlas of Depression which won the National Book Award, chose this line from Emma Lazarus’s letter collection Epistle to the Hebrews.

“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Min Jin Lee. Photograph: PR

Min Jin Lee

Min Jin Lee, the author of the novels Free Food for Millionaires and Pachinko, which was a finalist for the National Book Award, selected some lines from her book Pachinko.

Living every day in the presence of those who refuse to acknowledge your humanity takes great courage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mira Jacob. Photograph: Caroll Taveras/The Guardian

Mira Jacob

Mira Jacob, the author and illustrator of Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations and the critically acclaimed novel The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing, chose an excerpt from the poem Who Will Survive in America? or 2017: A Horror Film by the poet Ashley M Jones, from her book Dark//Thing.

All year, I have worked against this feeling, this country, this raging wreck from sea to shining sea. Do you know what it means to wake each morning, to realize your own brown hands aren’t enough to protect you, that the likelihood of any given day being your last one on earth is too high, that we are more likely to find life on Mars than to ever actually fix that fatal likelihood, that we will probably just continue with our meaningless Starbucks orders, fill the house with Nina Simone and call that “woke,” value furry, collared creatures over our own human kin? Sometimes, seems like they can smell our otherness, seems like we sparkle with something fiery in the sunlight, but not even our spectacular, crystalline glitter makes it easier for them to believe that we have any inalienable right to breathe.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Amitava Kumar. Photograph: Pako Mera/REX/Shutterstock

Amitava Kumar

Amitava Kumar, a writer, journalist and Vassar professor said: “I came to the US from India in the late 80s. The poems I started writing after a few years in this country were accounts of encounters with immigration officials. I wrote a series, Poems for the INS – the acronym stands for Immigration and Naturalization Service, a name that changed, in 2003, when the agency was subsumed by the newly created Department of Homeland Security – offering vignettes that staged imaginary conversations between the narrator and the official at the visa counter in Delhi. It was writing as revenge, fantasy in the purest form: fantasy tethered to the hurt of the real. I return to those lines now when I hear Trump’s words. Go back? No. We are here because you were there.”

“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?”

You

Add to this collection. Send us excerpts from poetry or literature that speak to overcoming racism and hatred.