Hoping Anyway

Hoping Anyway 

A review of Amanda Gorman’s book, “Something, Someday”

By Chris Carbone 

  Reading Amanda Gorman’s precociously inspired children’s book, “Something, Someday,” is an experience equal parts dread and delight. A little fable wherein the child not only does the right thing, but ignores the apathetic “sit and wait” and “this won’t work” from the adults to do so, may hit a little too close to home in this day and age. We like to think that the adults can be left to call the shots in the end. But, like the protagonist of this book, we cannot wait. 

  This is a deceptively simple tale about a child living in an urban area. He sees garbage all over the city, and decides something needs to be done about it. On the fourth page, when he begins to take action and clean up the waste, a most profound and metaphorically apt image crops up: that of an ant picking away at a discarded donut. This being accompanied by the line, “...the tiniest things make a huge difference.” Fitting when you consider the fact that the youngest Presidential inaugural poet wrote this. After finally cleaning up the trash he; along with the help of a few friends, constructs a raised garden bed because of which the community begins to thrive. 

  However, it is the beautifully simplistic collage art by Christian Robinson that echoes the most powerful sentiments this book has to offer readers; child and adult alike. On almost every page, in every illustration, there is some sort of conglomerate. In the literal sense of the collage style of the artist and, on another level, the idea of solidarity. However small you are, however many odds are stacked against you, you can succeed, but not alone. It brings to mind our President and CEO, Reverend Sara Smith; walking the streets of Bridgeport some fourteen years ago to ask our neighbors what they needed and how she could help. Like the unnamed protagonist of Gorman’s book, she erected Connecticut’s first and, as of this writing, only non-profit indoor hydroponic farm from tears of outrage, sweat of agony, and the support of a team that is second to none. 

  As Hope Blooms in Bridgeport, our 12th annual fundraiser, comes up this June, Gorman’s message both mirrors our own, and reminds us how much more work there is left to do. The second to last page of the book contains a line that, to me, is both a resounding piece of triumph, as well as an eerily incognizant reminder of where we are now; shot vicariously from Gorman’s world where right is rewarded and we all reap the benefits. Next to an illustration of the child and his neighbors at what appears to be a farmer’s market with all of the crops from their new garden, she writes “Something that is not a dream, but the day you live in.” Food insecurity, at its core, is not about a lack of food. Nor is it even about a lack of access to food. It starts with apathy. There are many voices saying , “no.” They are attempting to stifle action with the illusion of normalcy. But we must overcome apathy, and do it together.