“I was born early, along with my twin, and a lot of times, for infants, that can lead to learning delays," she told Winfrey in a teaser clip shared with People. "One of my delays was in speech and speech pronunciation, and also the auditory processing issue just means I really struggle as an auditory learner.”
"Specifically 'r' because it is one of the most complex letters in the English alphabet," she noted. "That was something that I would struggle with until probably 20 years of age. When you have a last name like Gorman, when you are writing poetry—all of the things that constitute my identity — when you go to a school like Harvard, which has two [of the letter r] in it, it leads to all these kinds of roadblocks."
"I'm really grateful for that experience because it informs my poetry," she told Winfrey. "I think it made me all that much stronger of a writer when you have to teach yourself how to say words from scratch. When you are learning through poetry how to speak English, it lends to a great understanding of sound, of pitch, of pronunciation, so I think of my speech impediment not as a weakness or a disability, but as one of my greatest strengths."
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