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Photography: Graydon Schwartz

My Name Is Hiwot
I'm tired of people asking me to smooth my name out for them.
They want me to bury it in the English
so that they can understand.
I will not accommodate the word for mouth.
I will not break my name
so your lazy English can sleep its tongue on top.
Fix your lips around it.

No, you can't give me a stupid nickname to replace this gift of five letters.
Try to pronounce it
before you write me off as
'Little One',
'Afro',
'The Ethiopian girl'
or any other poor excuse for a name you baptise me with
in your weakness.

My name is insulted that you won't speak it.
My name is a jealous god.
I kneel my English down every day
and offer my begging and broken Amharic
to be accepted by this lord from my parents' country.
This is my religion.
You are tainting it.

Every time you call me something else
you break it and kick it.
You really think that you're being clever by turning my name into a cackle?
He-what?
He-why?
He-when-how?
He-when-who?
He-get-what?
My name is not a joke

This is more than wind and the clap of a consonant.
My father handed me this heavy burden of five letters
decades before I was born.
With letters,
he tried to snatch his Ethiopia back from the middle of a red terror.
He tried to overthrow a fascist.
He was thrown into prison, ran out of his home.

My name is a frantic attempt to save a country
To preserve a legend
The only line I have leading me to a place
I've never been
It's a boat,
a plane,
a vessel carrying me to an Earth I've never felt.
I steep myself closer and closer to Ethiopia
by wrapping myself in this name.
This is my country in ink.

My name is a signature at the end of the last letter before the army comes.
It's the only music left in the midst of torture and fear.
It's the air that filled my father's lungs when he was released from prison.
The inhale that ushers in a new beginning.

My name is a poem
My father wrote it over
and over
and over again.
It's the lullaby that sends his home-sickness to bed.

I refuse to break myself into dust
For people too weak to carry my name in their mouths
Take two syllables of your time to pronounce this song of mine
It means life.

You shouldn't treat a breath as carelessly as this .
Cradle my name between your lips
as delicately as it deserves.

It's Hiwot.
Say it right.

About Hiwot Adilow
Hiwot Adilow is a writer from Philadelphia, a First Wave Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and an alum of the Philly Youth Poetry Movement. Her poetry has been featured on CNN, NPR, and Wisconsin Public Television.

Visit our website every day in May for our #APoemADay series to celebrate Africa Month.

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#APoemADay: 'My Name Is Hiwot' - Hiwot Adilow

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Photography: Graydon Schwartz My Name Is Hiwot I'm tired of people asking me to smooth my name out for them. They want me to bury it in the English so that they can understand. I will not accommodate the word for mouth. I will not break my name so your lazy English can sleep its tongue on top.

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In our present day world of texting, social media, fake news, and online participatory culture, the nature of language is fundamentally changing in drastic ways. Twitter forces users to limit comments to 150 characters or less, while texting’s efficient, quick mode of communication is filled with abbreviations that have made their way from behind our screens, into our mouths and the real world.  OMG! This changing landscape makes an exploration of the nature of language and its impact on our reality, relevant and important, and there is arguably no better novel to use as a guide than George Orwell’s 1984. Language and communication are central themes in the 1984, and is arguably one of the most important messages of the novel. Through Newspeak and the events in the novel, Orwell attempts to demonstrate that language is of central importance to human thought because it structures our reality, our ideas, and the quality of the ideas that we are able to formulate and express. Orwell’s narrative argues that if control of language was centralized in a political agency, such an agency could possibly alter the very structure of language to make it impossible to even conceive of disobedient or rebellious thoughts, because its citizens would not possess the vocabulary that would allow these ideologies to form.  Using these themes on language and thought control from 1984, combined with the companion novel Fahrenheit 451 and a collection of aligned, multimodal texts, this linked text set explores the value and importance of language and words on our reality, thoughts, identities, and behavior, and poses the essential question, why is language important, and do words really matter?

Fahrenheit 451 depicts a dystopian society where censorship and book burning is practiced. Its citizens condensed books, then relied on their titles, until finally finding them useless all together. In the novel there are those who defend the cause of language, those who attempt to destroy the value of words, and those who are victims of the abuse of power over language and thought, wielded by the government. The protagonist, Montag, tries to use language as weapon against the ignorance of his world, and ironically, the Fire Chief Beatty, uses the power of language as a weapon against those that attempt to preserve the value of knowledge. The novel aligns nicely with the thematic topic and 1984 as it brings in literature to the discussion and continues 1984 commentary on the value of individual expression and thought, and the power of literature’s language to enlighten, transform, and connect, as well as its ability to reveal truths of our reality, hearts, and the human condition.

Orwell wrote his famous essay “Politics of the English Language” in 1946 which formed the basis of Newspeak and his famous novel 1984. While this would be an ideal informative text to bring into this set, it’s reading is dense, technical, and complex, and far above my students’ reading level. William Lutz’s book Doublespeak, offers a more assessable discussion on the themes and ideas of Orwell’s essay, drawing on Orwell’s points and 1984 in the text. Lutz provides relevant examples of Doublespeak in our present society that allows students to gain the same insights on the technical aspects of language Orwell offered, building on their funds of knowledge why doing so. In this excerpt Lutz discusses the politics of language, or the ways language is used to influence and confuse, and world of Doublespeak. Lutz defines Doublespeak as “the language that makes the bad seem good, the negative appear positive, the unpleasant appear attractive… Doublespeak is the language that avoids or shifts responsibility” (p. 347-348).  Through this informative text students read about the kinds of Doublespeak, how to spot it, and its dangers. For example, students will ponder the effects when a corporation like Chrysler "initiates a career alterative enhancement program," instead of a massive layoff of five thousand workers. Lutz’s text aligns well with the essential question because Lutz focuses on the ways the “corruption of the function of language can have far-reaching consequences as it can infect and destroy the function of language, which is the communication between two groups” (p. 353). Since our country depends on citizens to select candidates for office and creating public policy, the importance of the words we use becomes evident. This text provides students with foundational knowledge that will equip them to better examine the nature of language and words, and their ability to control and confuse, as well as impact our beliefs, attitudes, perception, and feelings.

Lutz explains, “The use of Doublespeak can become pervasive when it becomes the coin of the political realm, with listeners and speakers convinced they understand such language. After a while we actuality believe the politicians don’t lie but only ‘misspeak’ … or believe failure can be an ‘incomplete success’” (p. 353). The video clip of a TV interview on Meet the Press with Kellyanne Conway continues Lutz discussion, while aligning with the themes of the novels and essential question. During the interview when confronted with lies told by the White House Press Secretary, Conway introduces the term, “alternative facts,” which is an example of Doublespeak. This interview also aligns with notion of fake news and the ethics of the control of information by the government, or those that speak for it, and from this students will consider the power of words when used to deliver falsehoods. Winston provided “alternative facts” as he corrected history, statistics, and facts in the Ministry of Truth and this interview and the statements presented at the White House conference draw the themes of 1984 out into our reality. The truths of the words we use matter, even more so by those sworn to uphold it. This text presents an opportunity for students to practice their critical thinking as they use this information to help answer the essential question, and consider the role the media plays in it.

While politics of language is important to the essential question, the ways in which language constructs our reality and the way we view the world, is a critical part to the importance of words and language, and Orwell’s themes. The TedTalk given by Lera Boroditsky provides an informative look at the cognitive science behind language and how it structures our world, thoughts, and communication. Boroditsky uses various languages and cultures to demonstrate that the structure and vocabulary of language can impact how we view time, witness events, and even give directions. She explains how our vocabulary and words shape our thoughts and world, for example cultures without words for numbers are unable to count objects in an image. Through this text students learn the fascinating science of Orwell’s argument, not to mention witnessing powerful public speaking in action, and are thus able to better understand how Winston and the citizens of Oceania had their thoughts and behavior limited through the shrinking of their vocabulary.

Shakespeare asked, “What’s in a name?” The spoken word poem “I am Hiwot” by Hiwot Adilow answers this question and brings issues of social justice and identity to the thematic discussion on words. The poem is intense, powerful, and valuable for every student to witness. The rhetoric is strong and Adilow uses incredible metaphors. She proclaims her name is her heritage, her culture and their fight, and to mispronounce her name is an insult to that legacy as well as all the word Hiwot represents and embodies. She recites:

“My father handed me this heavy burden of five letters

decades before I was born.

With letters, he tried to snatch his Ethiopia back from the middle of a red terror.

He tried to overthrow a fascist.

He was thrown into prison, ran out of his home.

My name is a frantic attempt to save a country

To preserve a legend”

From this poem students will consider the ways in which words can contain deep-rooted meanings and connotations. Words have the power to heal and hurt, to represent the strength and oppression of others, and the power to define us, connect us, or divide us . This text not only aligns with the essential question, but it also gives students a chance to consider issues of social justice issues surrounding language, which has far reaching value and presents another important aspect to this thematic collection.

The book burning in Fahrenheit 451 was practiced by the Nazis as a way to control German citizens and suppress dangerous ideas and thoughts that could hurt the government and their cause. Even in America censorship and banned books, and even book burning on occasion, have are practiced. In the letter “I am Very Real” by Kurt Vonnegut, Vonnegut reaches out to Drake High School after the educators there had burned his book, Slaughterhouse-Five (1967). He talks about the fact he is a person, and spent time crafting his book for a significant and important purpose, and to burn it is ignorant and un-American. In Fahrenheit 451 Montag states, “And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper.... It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life” (Bradbury 178). This letter aligns with this passage and highlights the importance of the act of writing and literature. The letter states, “Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own” (Vonnegut).  Censorship of books is censorship of words and the ideas they form. The cautionary tales of the two novels in this thematic unit depict the reason why we have gone to war against those who would burn books, because those groups seek to elevate their words and ideas over another, which is a dangerous thing to do. Like Vonnegut argues, books are real, the authors are real, he is real, and words are certainly real.

These texts all provide important aspects on the power and value of words, and why the language we use, as well as the way we use it, are vital to our world. Through the exploration of these multimodal, linked texts, students’ reading experiences of 1984 will be dramatically enhanced. Using this collection of works, the novel’s themes will be explored across a number of texts that offer different insights and perspectives into the value of the words they use everyday, teaching students to be critical thinkers, practice in becoming proficient in interpreting a range of texts, and developing their ability to read across content-areas. OMG!

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"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

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"What's in a name? That which we call a rose By any other name would smell as sweet."

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength

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War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength

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Fahrenheit 451 Quotes on Language/Literature

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Fahrenheit 451 Quotes on Language/Literature

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"What traitors books can be! You think they’re backing you up, and then they turn on you. Others can use them, too, and there you are, lost in the middle of the moor, in a great welter of nouns and verbs and adjectives."

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“‘Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them, at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.'”

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"It's a beautiful thing, the Destruction of words. Of course the great wastage is in the verbs and adjectives, but there are hundreds of nouns that can be got rid of as well. It isn't only the synonyms; there are also the antonyms. After all, what justification is there for a word, which is simply the opposite of some other word? A word contains its opposite in itself. Take ‘good,’ for instance. If you have a word like ‘good,’ what need is there for a word like ‘bad’? ‘Ungood’ will do just as well – better, because it's an exact opposite, which the other is not. Or again, if you want a stronger version of ‘good,’ what sense is there in having a whole string of vague useless words like ‘excellent’ and ‘splendid’ and all the rest of them? ‘Plusgood’ covers the meaning or ‘doubleplusgood’ if you want something stronger still. Of course we use those forms already, but in the final version of Newspeak there'll be nothing else. In the end the whole notion of goodness and badness will be covered by only six words – in reality, only one word. Don't you see the beauty of that, Winston?"

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"Politics? One column, two sentences, a headline! Then, in mid-air, all vanishes! Whirl man’s mind around about so fast under the pumping hands of publishers, exploiters, broadcasters that the centrifuge flings off all unnecessary, time-wasting thought!... School is shortened, discipline relaxed, philosophies, histories, languages dropped, English and spelling gradually gradually neglected, finally almost completely ignored. Life is immediate, the job counts, pleasure lies all about after work. Why learn anything save pressing buttons, pulling switches, fitting nuts and bolts?”

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George Orwell’s wrote this famous work of science fiction in 1948, setting it 40 years in the future in 1984.  Today, 1984 may not be in the future, but it could very well be our future, as the novel serves as a cautionary tale on government control and surveillance, and sends a clear message concerning the power of language and words, as well as the value of individual thought and expression. The novel is situated in the year 1984 in a place called Oceania, a totalitarian superpower in post World War II Europe. It’s protagonist is Winston Smith, who works in the Ministry of Truth in the records department, re-writing history to control collective memory and thought and align with the interests of The Party and the its head, Big Brother. In this dystopian society Big Bother is always watching, literally, and the government has gained control not only over the daily lives of its citizen, but their thoughts, beliefs, attitudes, and feelings as well, thanks to its control of language and information (past and present), book burning, surveillance and the Thought Police. Oppressed and unsatisfied with his life, Winston begins to take great risks to his life, starting a dairy and beginning an affair with Julia, a co-worker from the Fictions Department. Winston begins to have moments of clarity when he is with Julia and he starts to believe something is suspicious with The Party, Ingsoc. Winston is unable to think of the ideologies needed to rebel because he lacks the language and he seeks out the Brotherhood and its manifesto to tell him the how and why he lacks. Sadly, the Thought Police had been watching Winston the whole time and Julia and Winston are sent to the Ministry of Love and Room 101 to be tortured and brainwashed through thought control. The novel ends with both betraying each other under torture and the with the thought control tactics successful, both are filled with love and loyalty for Big Brother and released back into society.

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A dystopian novel set in a future American society that has outlawed books, viewing knowledge and conflicting ideas and individual thought to be dangerous because it leads to conflict over right and wrong and leads to violence and non-conformity. The protagonist is Guy Montag, a fireman whose job is to set fire to books. Montag grows disillusioned with his part in the censorship of language and literature and quits his job after being caught reading and stashing books. He must navigate through the consequences of his action, fleeing the firemen and devoting himself to the preservation of written language and literature, as well as culture. The novel explores issues of book burning and censorship, as well as resistance to conformity and control of individuals via language, technology, and mass media. Bradbury illustrates how the government is able to use mass media and control of information to influence society and suppress individualism through book burning, revealing the power of the written word to empower, inform, and shape our notions of right, wrong, and personal identity.

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"By 2050, earlier, probably – all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron – they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking – not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness."

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"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten"

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Cognitive science behind Orwell's argument on the importance of words and language. Lera Boroditsky speaks on the ability of language to structure our reality, impact how we witness an event, give directions, and even think about time and space.

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Lera Boroditsky: How language shapes the way we think

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There are about 7,000 languages spoken around the world -- and they all have different sounds, vocabularies and structures. But do they shape the way we think? Cognitive scientist Lera Boroditsky shares examples of language -- from an Aboriginal community in Australia that uses cardinal directions instead of left and right to the multiple words for blue in Russian -- that suggest the answer is a resounding yes.

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"I am Hiwot" Hiwot Adilow
Shakespeare asked, "What's in a name?" This poet reveals the answer! Adilow speaks on the power of words to embody identity and issues of social justice

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Amazing poetry by Hiwot Adilow at Brave New Voices 2012

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“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 

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“Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.” Nathaniel Hawthorne 

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Some of the greatest sins of the human race have been committed under the cloak of magical words and phrases

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Some of the greatest sins of the human race have been committed under the cloak of magical words and phrases

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Aramaic phrase that means "As I speak, so it will be created".

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Kurt Vonnegut's "I am very real"
A letter on book burning
"And I thought about books. And for the first time I realized that a man was behind each one of the books. A man had to think them up. A man had to take a long time to put them down on paper. And I'd never even thought that thought before...It took some man a lifetime maybe to put some of his thoughts down, looking around at the world and life, and then I came along in two minutes and boom! it's all over" -Montag, Fahrenheit 451

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Since first being published in 1967, and despite being considered one of the great modern novels, Kurt Vonnegut's time-hopping, semi-autobiographical, anti-war classic, Slaughterhouse-Five, has been, and continues to be, banned from classrooms and libraries the world over due to what is often described by those who censor it as its "obscene" content. This view wasn't held by Bruce Severy, a then-26-year-old English teacher at Drake High School, North Dakota, who in 1973 decided to use the novel as a teaching aid in his classroom, much to the delight of his students. Unfortunately for them, the head of the school board, Charles McCarthy, had other ideas: the next month, on November 10th, he demanded that all 32 copies be burned in the school's furnace.

Days later, an angry and disappointed Kurt Vonnegut wrote to Charles McCarthy and made his feelings known. His letter failed to generate a reply.

( Source: The Letters of Note book, reproduced with permission of The Estate of Kurt Vonnegut.)

November 16, 1973

Dear Mr. McCarthy:

I am writing to you in your capacity as chairman of the Drake School Board. I am among those American writers whose books have been destroyed in the now famous furnace of your school.

Certain members of your community have suggested that my work is evil. This is extraordinarily insulting to me. The news from Drake indicates to me that books and writers are very unreal to you people. I am writing this letter to let you know how real I am.

I want you to know, too, that my publisher and I have done absolutely nothing to exploit the disgusting news from Drake. We are not clapping each other on the back, crowing about all the books we will sell because of the news. We have declined to go on television, have written no fiery letters to editorial pages, have granted no lengthy interviews. We are angered and sickened and saddened. And no copies of this letter have been sent to anybody else. You now hold the only copy in your hands. It is a strictly private letter from me to the people of Drake, who have done so much to damage my reputation in the eyes of their children and then in the eyes of the world. Do you have the courage and ordinary decency to show this letter to the people, or will it, too, be consigned to the fires of your furnace?

I gather from what I read in the papers and hear on television that you imagine me, and some other writers, too, as being sort of ratlike people who enjoy making money from poisoning the minds of young people. I am in fact a large, strong person, fifty-one years old, who did a lot of farm work as a boy, who is good with tools. I have raised six children, three my own and three adopted. They have all turned out well. Two of them are farmers. I am a combat infantry veteran from World War II, and hold a Purple Heart. I have earned whatever I own by hard work. I have never been arrested or sued for anything. I am so much trusted with young people and by young people that I have served on the faculties of the University of Iowa, Harvard, and the City College of New York. Every year I receive at least a dozen invitations to be commencement speaker at colleges and high schools. My books are probably more widely used in schools than those of any other living American fiction writer.

If you were to bother to read my books, to behave as educated persons would, you would learn that they are not sexy, and do not argue in favor of wildness of any kind. They beg that people be kinder and more responsible than they often are. It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don't damage children much. They didn't damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.

After I have said all this, I am sure you are still ready to respond, in effect, "Yes, yes-but it still remains our right and our responsibility to decide what books our children are going to be made to read in our community." This is surely so. But it is also true that if you exercise that right and fulfill that responsibility in an ignorant, harsh, un-American manner, then people are entitled to call you bad citizens and fools. Even your own children are entitled to call you that.

I read in the newspaper that your community is mystified by the outcry from all over the country about what you have done. Well, you have discovered that Drake is a part of American civilization, and your fellow Americans can't stand it that you have behaved in such an uncivilized way. Perhaps you will learn from this that books are sacred to free men for very good reasons, and that wars have been fought against nations which hate books and burn them. If you are an American, you must allow all ideas to circulate freely in your community, not merely your own.

If you and your board are now determined to show that you in fact have wisdom and maturity when you exercise your powers over the eduction of your young, then you should acknowledge that it was a rotten lesson you taught young people in a free society when you denounced and then burned books-books you hadn't even read. You should also resolve to expose your children to all sorts of opinions and information, in order that they will be better equipped to make decisions and to survive.

Again: you have insulted me, and I am a good citizen, and I am very real.

Kurt Vonnegut

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Since first being published in 1967, and despite being considered one of the great modern novels, Kurt Vonnegut's time-hopping, semi-autobiographical, anti-war classic, Slaughterhouse-Five , has been, and continues to be, banned from classrooms and libraries the world over due to what is often described by those who censor it as its "obscene" content.

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Doublespeak in action! Kellyanne Conway's Meet the Press interview and the introduction to "Alternative Facts." (sales of 1984 shot up after this interview...)

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Why is language important and do words really matter?

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Companion Novel: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

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Companion Novel: Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451

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William Lutz, excerpt from Doublespeak
“Doublethink means the power of holding two contradictory beliefs in one’s mind simultaneously, and accepting both of them… Doublethink lies at the very heart of Ingsoc, since the essential act of the Party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty. To tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any fact that has become inconvenient" (Orwell 176).