Analysis Of Ego Tripping By Nikki Giovanni

In Nikki Giovanni’s opinion she believes that women are often over looked by men because they have everything. Throughout history men have been given multiple opportunities to be successful compared to woman that had limited options. Giovanni understands that women’s strength is over shadowed by simple traits of a male. This is exactly why she felt the need to express African American woman worth through this poem. She wanted to give women something they could look forward to.

The word ego-tripping originated in 1967 meaning that something that someone does in order to feel important or better than other people. Giovanni wanted women in a sense to trip over their egos. She wanted women to see themselves in all their glory. She used this poem to show them the vastness they hold within themselves. In Nikki Giovanni’s “Ego Tripping” Giovanni sheds light upon the self -admiration that everyone should posses through historical references, beauty and power.

Throughout this entire poem Nikki Giovanni used multiple references to historical events about that beauty and power that lies within every African American woman. “I was born in the Congo” Giovanni opens the poem up with this line that stated where majority of African American women evolved from somewhere in Central Africa. “I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the Sphinx.” Giovanni used this

She is expressing how extravagant her work is. No other woman could create such a pyramid that was so unique. African American woman have this uniqueness that no one else is blessed with. Giovanni use of imagery strengthens the reader’s view of the surreal world that she created in this