eep in Amanda Gorman’s closet sits a doll that may or may not have stolen the facts of her reluctant owner’s life. A month after the 23-year-old poet eclipsed the transfer of power at President Biden’s inauguration with an energizing performance of her song of a nation, “The Hill We Climb,” she was thinking about an earlier, discomfiting booking—at the American Girl boutique at the Grove in Los Angeles. We were at a green space a stone’s throw from Gorman’s spot in L.A., a one-bedroom in an apartment building the color of sherbet. Reclining on blankets she spread over a manicured knoll, she tilted her head, birdlike, and groaned softly, “They might get angry at me for saying this.”
The Mattel brand had invited Gorman to do a reading celebrating the arrival of Gabriela, the latest “Girl of the Year,” to expectant young customers. This was New Year’s Day, 2017, and Gorman was an 18-year-old freshman at Harvard, home on winter break, decompressing from the surprise of New England frost. At the time, Gorman had already been named Youth Poet Laureate of L.A. (the first one ever) and was a known and admired figure on the national spoken-word circuit. The night before the event, the American Girl team briefed her on the biography of the doll. It was like a horror movie—Peele-esque, we agreed after she told me the story. “Gabriela loves the arts and uses poetry to help find her voice so she can make a difference in her community,” the website for the defunct toy reads. Gorman loves the arts and uses poetry to help find her voice so she can make a difference in her community. Gabriela is brown-skinned with curly hair. Amanda is brown-skinned with natural hair. “She was a Black girl with a speech impediment!” said Gorman (referring to her own speech impairment), playfully clawing at the beautiful hive of twists atop her head, adding that her twin sister’s pet name is also, can you believe it, Gabby.
Gorman did the reading anyway. American Girl told me that the doll was not inspired by Gorman’s life, and sent me a photo of Gorman, mid-performance, costumed in Gabriela’s exact outfit. “I felt like if I backed out of the event, I would have been failing the girls who would have this Black doll,” Gorman said. The rest of the year, when advertisements for Gabriela crept into her view, or friends would text her excitedly that they had seen her doll, she would avert her gaze, thinking on the mad vinyl thing she had locked away out of sight at home.
Gorman, good-naturedly, doesn’t want to make a big deal out of the experience, but years later, the notion that “a public figure’s life” could be mined without her consent still rankles, principally because this sort of heated adulation is now inextricable from her ascendant writing career. “I built up this narrative in my head that, you know, I had to be some type of,” she paused, raising her hands from her lap to air-quote, “ ‘role model.’ ”
https://www.vogue.com/article/amanda-gorman-cover-may-2021
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