The Hill We Climb

Gorman’s poem and career are direct responses to a number of social factors, including the Black Lives Matter movement, the #MeToo movement, and the presidency of Donald Trump. Much of Gorman’s poetry focuses on issues facing women and Black people in America during the 2010s and throughout American history. She writes about the injustices of society against the oppressed, and her activism focuses on bettering the lives of those whom America has traditionally kept at the bottom.

For activists on the political left, Donald Trump’s presidency represented a return to xenophobia, racism, sexism, patriarchy, homophobia, and transphobia. When he ran for President in 2016, Trump campaigned on the deportation of Hispanic people and the outlawing of Muslim immigrants. During the campaign, multiple women accused him of sexual misconduct; he used sexist and demeaning rhetoric to divide his followers from the rest of the country. When he became President, Trump did not change his rhetorical approach, pushed policies that many people saw as regressive, and created a culture of antagonism.

Early in Trump’s presidency, the #MeToo movement—a reckoning with sexism, sexual harassment, and misogyny—took off, igniting a cultural shift in the way people saw gender.