Like most of us, Amanda Gorman has been cooped up at home because of the pandemic. In her case, that’s meant staying in her West Los Angeles apartment binge-watching “The Great British Baking Show.” Unlike most of us, she got some very exciting news recently via Zoom: She’d been handpicked to read a poem at U.S. President Joe Biden’s inauguration. The U.S. first lady, Jill Biden, is a fan of her work and convinced the inaugural committee that Gorman would be a perfect fit. Gorman, 22, became the youth poet laureate of Los Angeles at age 16 in 2014 and the first national youth poet laureate three years later. Last week, she became the youngest poet to write and recite a piece at a presidential inauguration, following in the considerably more experienced footsteps of Maya Angelou and Robert Frost. Her precocious path was paved with both opportunities and challenges, an early passion for language and the diverse influences of her native city. Gorman grew up near Westchester but spent the bulk of her time around the New Roads School, a socioeconomically diverse private school in Santa Monica. Her mother, Joan Wicks, teaches middle school in Watts. Shuttling among the neighborhoods gave Gorman a window onto the deep inequities that divide ZIP Codes. “Having a mom who is a teacher had a huge impact on me,” said Gorman, who witnessed her ability to empower young people through language. Long before she began reading her own poetry aloud in grand spaces for grand occasions — from the Fourth of July to the inauguration of a new president of Harvard University — Gorman was falling in love, simultaneously, with the written and spoken word. Her relationship with poetry dates at least to the third grade, when her teacher read Ray Bradbury’s “Dandelion Wine” to the class. She can’t recall what metaphor caught her attention, but she remembers that it reverberated inside her. Her first foray into public speaking came even earlier: a second-grade monologue in the voice of Chief Osceola of Florida’s Seminole tribe. “It was important in my development because I really wanted to do justice to the story and bring it to life. It was the first time that I really leaned into the performance of text.” Gorman is a lot better at it now, but still working on her confidence as a public speaker. In fact, like her predecessor Angelou and the president-elect, she grapples with a speech impediment. Gorman, who majored in sociology at Harvard, has spoken up in public forums about a broad range of issues, including racism and police brutality; abortion bans in the U.S.; and the incarceration of migrant children. She is also the first person to announce her intention to run for president in 2036, the first election cycle in which she’ll be old enough to do so. Seeing U.S. Vice President-elect Kamala Harris poised to take office has reinvigorated her plans. “There’s no denying that a victory for her is a victory for all of us who would like to see ourselves represented as women of color in office,” she said. “It makes it more imaginable. Once little girls can see it, little girls can be it. Because they can be anything that they want, but that representation to make the dream exist in the first place is huge — even for me.” In September, Gorman will release “Change Sings,” the first of two children’s books. The poet says she was driven by the desire to publish a book “in which kids could see themselves represented as change-makers in history, rather than just observers.” It will be illustrated by Loren Long, who created the art in Obama’s “Of Thee I Sing: A Letter to My Daughters.” (SD-Agencies) | 