Ilhan Omar responded to racist chants by posting a Maya Angelou poem. Image: U.S. House Office of Photography
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
— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) July 18, 2019
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.
Andrew Solomon chose this line from Emma Lazarus’s letter collection Epistle to the Hebrews:
“Until we are all free, we are none of us free.”
(To read other contributions, and to offer one of your own, please visit The Guardian.)
