Hi, I'm Melissa Molano. And this is Sorry Not Sorry. I am so excited about today's guest I can't even tell you. My guest is

Kwame Alexander. Kwame is a poet, educator, an award-winning author of more than 30 books for children and adults.

His newest book, Light for the World to See, A Thousand Words on Race and and hope is now available.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a fireman

and a doctor and a king.

The first two didn't work out too well.

In 2020, America was on fire.

Thousands of protesters marched on Washington last week to protest systemic racism and police brutality. The demonstration came 57 years after Martin Luther King

Jr's I Have a Dream speech.

One morning we woke up and I was ready I had my clothes on in my backpack and he says

we're not going to school today and I say yes.

And he says because we're going to march over the Brooklyn Bridge and I say

uh-uh. I'm here to teach you about poetry. Are you ready for this? It is about to go down.

So look, I believe that words can change the world. I've always believed that.

I know it in my gut. It is a metaphorical thing, it is an esoteric thing,

and it's also a literal thing. The thing is, I write a bunch of books for kids. I travel the world speaking to kids, or at least I did when the world was

open. But how do I actually know it's working? Am I touching the lives? Am I actually inspiring,

engaging, entertaining, and empowering young people?

You hope and you write for that, but is it actually happening?

And then like one day last week, I get a lot of fan mail from kids and that's interesting to say as a writer to get fan mail. But hey, it is what it is. So I get fan mail from kids around the world and this kid wrote this fourth grader he wrote me this

dear Kwame Alexander most books I see at the library just look normal but when I saw

your book rebound it really caught my eye.

...