Vietnamese American teen succeeds Amanda Gorman as National Youth Poet Laureate

ALEXANDRA HUYNH

After her inspirational reading of her poem at President Biden's inauguration, Amanda Gorman will be a tough act to follow but a California teenager believe she's up to the task, drawing from the deep well of her Vietnamese heritage.

Alexandra Huỳnh, 18, from Sacramento, California last month was named the nation's new Youth Poet Laureate, taking the baton from Gorman.

An alumna of Sacramento Area Youth Speaks, or SAYS, she is the country’s fifth National Youth Poet Laureate, which is presented by Urban Word, a New York-based youth literary arts and youth development organization.

“I just feel overwhelmingly grateful because I know this win is not mine alone — it’s my entire community’s, and I’m standing on the shoulders of my ancestors and all the sacrifices and wisdom that they’ve gained to bring me here,” Huỳnh said.

As National Youth Poet Laureate, Huynh will serve as a cultural ambassador for the United States using poetry as a platform for the literary arts and civic engagement.

Huynh will represent the National Youth Poet Laureate program and the national youth literary arts community through a series of performances and civic engagements through May 2022. Prior to being named the 2021 National Youth Poet Laureate, Huynh served as the Western Regional Ambassador for the United States.

A second-generation Vietnamese American, Huynh uses poetry as a tool of self-reclamation and social justice for marginalized communities, according to a press release from Urban Word.

Huynh says she has been writing song lyrics since age 7 and became serious about poetry in high school, especially after performing during a local poetry slam and sensing the added power of words when said out loud. 

She cites Ocean Vuong and Diana Khoi Nguyen as among her favorite writers, and she hopes to eventually publish her own work and see it translated into Vietnamese, her “mother tongue.”

“Vietnamese itself is a very poetic language,” she said. “In Vietnamese culture, poems are spoken every day. They're pop culture references. For me, having poetry in my life never felt like I was going against the grain.”

Huynh was selected from amongst four regional finalists. The previous National Youth Poet Laureate was Amanda Gorman, who became an international celebrity after reading at President Joe Biden’s inauguration.

“Her trajectory has changed what I thought was possible for a poet,” Huynh says, noting that Gorman has appeared on the cover of Vogue magazine and read at this year's Super Bowl. “She has encouraged me to dream big.”

This fall, as a first-year student at Stanford, Huynh aims to combine her passions for creative writing, science and civic engagement.

“I spend a lot of time in my head, so poetry is for me a sort of survival mechanism,” Huynh told USA Today. “I wouldn’t be able to move through the world with the same amount of clarity had I not worked it out first on the page.”