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National Mandatory Poetry Reading List for High Schools in the United States

Updated: Nov 7, 2020

This list is a follow up to my previous post about the mandatory literature that all High School students across America should be taught. As I said in the previous post "the mandatory reading in high schools across America is atrocious and downright systematically racist." Following is a list of BIPOC poets that must be read in conjunction with the literature from the "National Mandatory Reading List for High Schools in the United States."


Sonia Sanchez
  1. Sonia Sanchez (African American)

  2. Langston Hughes (African American)

  3. Warson Shire (African American)

  4. Tao Lin (Taiwanese American)

  5. Maya Angelou (African American)

  6. Nikki Giovanni (African American)

  7. Anis Mogjani (Persian-American)

  8. Natalie Diaz (Mojave Indian)

  9. Sandra Cisneros (Latinx)

  10. Sawako Nakayasu (Japanese-American)

This is short and does not encompass all of the amazing BIPOC poets that this generation

Sawako Nakayasu

and older generations have to offer. All the poets' names are links to pages that highlight their poetry, so I encourage you to click each and every one. For my purpose, I kept it short so these poets and their poems could be easily incorporated into high school curriculums across the States. I've said it before and I'll say it again: if you want an ignorant America, please go ahead and disregard this post, but if you want an informed and intelligent America, you best head my advice.


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