Unlike many other poems, “The Hill We Climb” is a piece of spoken poetry. This means it is meant to be listened to and performed in front of an audience. As such, Gorman acts as the speaker of the poem, as well as the poet. Although Gorman is the poem’s speaker, she speaks for the collective, positioning herself as a representative of the American people – a member of the “we” used throughout the poem. She is careful not to merge her point of view as an individual with the message she shares as representative of the populace. This is most evident in her wording at the poem’s start: "We, the successors of a country and a time / Where a skinny black girl / Descended from slaves and raised by a single mother / Can dream of becoming president / Only to find herself reciting for one" (17-...