America’s Nation

During our most recent workshop, Hyde Park began our session by attempting to fill in a map of the United States. This sparked a discussion about what it means to be part of a nation, the places in the US that dominate our consciousness, and who gets to decide what the United States is and who belongs. Looking into the past, we read an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and learned about a long tradition of Black poets responding to his work, which maps out his ideas about America’s vast populations and landscape in a pre-emancipation America. Poets then wrote poems reflecting on what their America looks and feels like.