I wanted to write it as sort of a wake-up call to white Americans to acknowledge and know the truth, to fight against a proclivity to maintain the hierarchy, whether conscious or not. I wanted to write this as a reminder to Black children and families to remember their humanity. I used my words to scream, to shout, to sort of lift up my voice to shine a little light for the world. We speak, we write, we do language, that is how civilizations heal. And then a friend of mine sent me a quote by Toni Morrison that said this is precisely the time when artists go to work. I didn't know how to find answers to assert myself to do something. I think the weight of being Black was too much to carry for me for a long time. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and Blackstone Publishing
"I think that through the listening of a poem or the reading of a poem about the woes of the world - and we've got a lot of woes right now - we can be inspired to find the wonderful in ourselves and in each other," he tells NPR. In the book, Light For The World To See: A Thousand Words On Race And Hope, Alexander writes three poems on three events: the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis, Colin Kaepernick's kneeling protests before NFL games, and the election of Barack Obama as president. With his new book of poetry about race in America, Morning Edition poet-in-residence Kwame Alexander hopes to "shine a little light for the world." Morning Edition poet in residence Kwame Alexander on Oct.
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