A Taiwanese American girl, Angela Lee, has won the prestigious national Voice of Youth Advocates 2014 teen poetry contest.
Lee wrote her winning entry, “We Wear Black Because It’s Zhu Yu’s Death,” after hearing stories from her parents about their life in Taiwan and the struggle faced by many in Taiwan in the face of Chinese threats.
Lee’s poem says "Zhu Yu, it rings of joy and patriotism, for it means freedom in our language, Taiwanese. And yes, there is a difference between Taiwan and China. A difference between the way we act, the way we speak, the way we think that we belong to nobody."
The young poet said that she wrote the poem originally for a school assignment, and she wanted to write about something that had to do with her ancestry.
Angela Lee is one of the five winners this year. Her poem will be published in the April 2015 edition of VOYA magazine, a leading national library journal for teen and school librarians that promotes young adult literature and reading.