Celebrate the #PowerofFirsts
For the International Day of the Girl in 2017, Amanda Gorman, the first-ever Youth Poet Laureate of the United States, composed “Day of the Girl: The Power of Firsts,” a poem highlighting the resilience of girls and women.
Illustrators Kimothy Joy and Sabrina Epstein turned her words into social media art. Now, it's your turn to spread the message.
Pick your favorite verse: Or two. Or three. We love them all. (on mobile, tap and hold on image to download; on desktop, right click and save)
Post on Instagram: Tag @shesthefirst and @amandascgorman with hashtag #PowerofFirsts
The Power of Firsts
by Amanda Gorman, first-ever Youth Poet Laureate of the U.S.
Power unfurls in a girl at school
like the first pages of a book unwritten,
She’s a story waiting to ignite.
An educated girl is like the question the first rain
tosses at the earth
after the drought —
Are you ready to start again?
A girl who dreams to be the first in her line
to go to school
is the most vivid of things —
like the one red spark that stands up to the sky
in a chorus of wet logs.
A girl who graduates secondary school
is like the first wave to hug the shore
After a hurricane,
Whispering the coming of better things.
These we know as truths.
Not wonders.
The miracle isn’t just in a girl being the first;
It is in her seeing
that which is nonexistent;
It is her seeing the blank space of an untouched sky
and sculpting her own dreams into the emptiness.
A girl who is the first
Is a vision in and of herself.
These girls don’t want to be unbelievable
they want to be believed in,
for educated girls not to be a marvel
but a movement.
Elly from Tanzania: “What we do for ourselves dies with us, but what we do for others remains forever.”
The first bud of spring sings the other seeds into joining her uprising.
Angel in India: “I won’t stop learning, because I carry my book bag with me everywhere I go.”
The sky carries tears. But also the sun. And that’s what makes it blinding.
Deepa in Nepal says: “I am a girl, and I am better than you think, sturdier than I look, smarter than you know, and braver than I saw”
After all
You don’t know how strong the willow tree is until
You see her arms dance in the face of the storm.
We remember this and
more so that we might imagine
a day for the girl without such firsts,
Where the wind opens the floodgate
for the river of women behind her.
We are here
not to be the first
but to refuse to be
the last.