I could have written about Miley Cryus, American Horror Story, Urban Outfitters or Dunkin Donuts- really anything I see or hear on a daily basis somehow corresponds to the way the country we live in constructs American identity. But nothing resonates the way Nikky Finney’s National Book Award speech does.  Her book Head Off & Split could be studied alongside any of our texts this semester, and her acceptance speech for the award the book won should be as well. Not only does her story prove that a person with a dream can make that dream a reality, but that an African American girl can as well.  Like the southern gothic writers we’ve read (Welty, Faulker, Wright), she rewrites any trace of southern nostalgia by beginning her speech with a slave code forbidding anyone from teaching or circulating any literary material written for or by slaves.  This, of course, should remind us just how remarkable Phyllis Wheatley’s story is.  Finney continues to thank those who have helped her along the way, all of whom carry with them the ideals the country likes to pride itself upon: hardworking, compassionate, unresisting, and intelligent men and women. Finney’s address to her mother who, “made Christmas, Thanksgiving, and birthdays out of foil, lace, cardboard, and paper mache, insisting beauty into our deeply segregated southern days.” Reminds me of Gwendolyn Brooks’ “Kitchenette building” which celebrates the hardships of black, segregated urban life just because that life is beautiful thanks to those working to find beauty in it. While it may seem obvious that a contemporary poet’s award speech would comment on the types of American narratives we’ve been reading, I didn’t realize exactly just how much it would cover. From Crevecoeur to Hughes, Finney fits right in. And who, American or not, could not be proud to hear what she had to say at that podium? Thanks to YouTube, I can hear it on repeat.

The full transcript of her speech can be found here .