Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, "God's Language"

Naomi Shihab Nye, "Famous",
Padma Venkatraman, "Whenever You See a Tree"
Jacqueline Woodson, Brown Girl Dreaming, (Copyright ©2014 by Jacqueline Woodson)

Joseph Seamon Cotter Jr., "Rain Music"

Langston Hughes, "Dreams"

Maya Angelou, "Caged Bird"

Clark Coolidge, untitled poem

Ocean Vuong, Time Is a Mother, (Used by permission Penguin Random House)

Alyse Knorr, "Archive Fever"

Emily Jane Bronte, "To Imagination"

Anne Carson, ''The Glass Essay" (Used by permission of New Directions Publishing Corporation)

Ching-In Chen, "Dear O"

Toni Morrison, The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations, "James Baldwin Eulogy"

Ernest Gaines, quote from A Conversation with Ernest J. Gaines by Lawrence Bridges (Used by permission of Lawrence Bridges)

Audre Lorde, "Coal", (Used by permission of the estate of Audre Lorde)

Tato Laviera, "Spanglish", (Used by permission of Arte Publico Press Publication)

Shel Silverstein, "Falling Up" from Falling Up by Shel Silverstein Illustrated by Shel Silverstein. (Copyright ©1996 Evil Eye Music, Inc.

Jack Gilbert, "The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart" (Used by permission of Penguin Random House)

W.E.B. Du Bois, Letter from W.E.B. Du Bois to Yolande Du Bois

Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, "Songs for the People"

William Wordsworth, "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud"

Clarissa Scott Delany, "Solace"

Claude Mckay, "I Know My Soul"

John Milton, Areopagitica

Jessie Redmon Fauset, "Douce Souvenance"

James Weldon Johnson, "Lift Every Voice and Sing"

Sadakichi Hartmann, "Twilight Hours"

Alice Walker, "Desire," from The World Will Follow Joy, (Reprinted by permission of The Joy Harris Literary Agency, Inc.)

W. B. Yeats, "Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven"

Emily Dickinson, "Hope is the Thing with Feathers"