The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni: Essays and Memoir on Civil Rights, Education, and the Revolutionary 1960s

by Nikki Giovanni

This omnibus edition collects celebrated poet and activist Nikki Giovanni’s adult Racism 101, Sacred Cows and Other Edibles and seven (7) selections from An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1971. Racism 101 (1994) contains essays that indict higher education for the inequities it perpetuates and contemplates the legacy of the 1960s. Giovanni gives searing commentary on Spike Lee and the making of Malcolm X , W.E.B. DuBois, affirmative action, President JFK and the state of urban schools. Racism 101 adds an important chapter to the debate on American national values. Sacred Cows and Other Edibles (1988) received the Ohioana Library Award. In it Nikki’s esays and articles take on the loftiness of higher education and personal major life crises. In Gemini (1971), Giovanni explores one of the most tumultuous periods in our history. Her essays take us from her childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, through her work in the Black revolution of the sixties, to her emergence as an acclaimed poet. Nikki interweaves warm recollections of her personal history with incisive vignettes of cultural and political history, including her often surprising opinions of Amiri Baraka, Angela Davis, Lena Horne, Stokely Carmichael, H. Rap Brown and others.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction, Race, Essays, Biography

592 pages, Paperback

First published December 16, 2003

About the author

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Over subsequent decades, her works discussed social issues, human relationships, and hip hop. Poems such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.
Giovanni received numerous awards and holds 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She was also given the key to over two dozen cities. Giovanni was honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. One of her more unique honors was having a South America bat species, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after her in 2007.
Giovanni was proud of her Appalachian roots and worked to change the way the world views Appalachians and Affrilachians.
Giovanni taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1, 2022. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant-poem at a memorial for the shooting victims.

Reviews

[Resa Boydston · Rating 5 out of 5]

i LOVE reading Nikki's early and later works. i wanna be like her when i grow up!!

[Jenny · Rating 4 out of 5]

She is dark and funny and her truth shines through. I think she would be incredibly interesting to hear speak. She is just enough years older that her view of America is as to the present generation can't conceive of a world without cell phones. She is harsh (as she should be) in her judgements but also points out where someone else's truth collides with or has empathy with history. Definitely worth the read.

[Andrea Engle · Rating 5 out of 5]

A collection of essays, meditations, and other prose pieces by the poet Nikki Giovanni ... a potpourri of thoughts and remembrances ... conversational for the most part, and eminently readable ...

[Cecilia]

She paints my world with her words! "I know this profession does not easily lend itself to friendships. Our friends are either deathly afraid that we will write about them or terribly bored at hearing the same subject discussed from all possible points of view. It's what writers do-talk. I think I am pretty ordinary. I think if I was looking for somebody to hang out with I'd be the last person I'd choose....mostly I take things pretty serious...I just think things should mean something and I get confused when there is no meaning to be found. We waste too much, we humans, because we refuse to recognize that there is a possibility of order and things making sense and we as a planet doing better".

[Jayms · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can't wait to get into this book! I love Nikki and her writing, she is amzing.

[Gineen · Rating 4 out of 5]

need to hear her strong voice- she is all over the place - in the best way- appreciating her retelling of early neighborhood days and political involvement

[Lindsay · Rating 4 out of 5]

The kidnap poem. You can read that and LOVE the book.