Civil Rights Movement: An Analysis Of Nikki Giovanni's Poetry

Nikki Giovanni

“We write because believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained,”—Nikki Giovanni a famous award winning poet, best known to write poems that range from love and friendship to the Civil Rights Movement. Nikki Giovanni has many well-known and famous poems. Nikki Giovanni’s life of a high spirited black woman living in the 1960s has influenced her poetry.

On June 7 of 1943 in Knoxville, TN Nikki Giovanni was officially introduced to the world. Raised in Cincinnati, Ohio Giovanni was brought up as an African American through the Civil Rights Movement. Giovanni has and older sister and a close relationship with her grandmother. Additionally, Giovanni grew up in poverty and tough times. However, Giovanni still remained happy during her childhood. It was when Giovanni went to Austin High school that she began her involvement in the Black Arts Movement. Giovanni was accepted into

Fisk University when she was in 11th grade and got her bachelor of the Arts degree in 1967, and attended the graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia. Giovanni likes to describe herself as a dreamer, and a happy person who enjoys old age. She struggled through segregation and racism like every person of color did at the time, and is a strong lung cancer survivor.
Giovanni enjoys writing militant poetry.

Militant poetry is intended to get a response out of the reader, Giovanni wrote these poems dealing with racism out of anger. She wrote for awareness. At the time, no one seemed interested in publishing her first book of poems, so Giovanni took it upon herself to make her own company and publish the poems on her own. Giovanni’s better-known works include: “Love Is”, “Choices”, “A Poem Of Friendship”, and “I Wrote A Good Omelet.” Her family provided her and her older sister with many books. Authors such as Richard Wright, Langston Hughes, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, and John Hersey inspired Giovanni to write. Giovanni’s written many books throughout her career and eventually grew into children's books. Critics tend to say that Giovanni writes out of rage but she claims that everyone's writing is based off of rage. Her writing is focuses on the African American identity. Giovanni has won seven NAACP Image awards and has been named a History Maker. Giovanni enjoys cooking, traveling, listening to music, writing, and

dreaming.
In the poem, “Nikki-Rosa” Nikki Giovanni places her name by Rosa Parks name for the title. Giovanni does this to signify that she is a Black Rights Activist. Notably,” She describes her experience of growing up in an impoverished, black household and highlights that people—often white people—tend to misinterpret and make assumptions about what poverty meant to her,” (yesmagazine.com). “Nikki-Rosa” has an overall conversational yet critical tone. To demonstrate, in line 5,”and if you become famous or something.” Additionally, on lines 12-13,”and somehow when you talk about home / it never gets across.” In the first line the speaker calls her, or a black person’s, childhood remembrances a drag, a tiresome and difficult pull. But in the last line the speaker says,” all the while I was quite happy,” meaning that she is still content with childhood even though it was a drag. The speaker juxtapositions her childhood to her biographers after she got famous to demonstrate how white people wouldn’t understand her happiness through tough times. Furthermore, the speaker uses repetition in the phrase, “never understand,” three times on lines 17, 29, and 32 after writing, “never gets across on line,” on line 13. The speaker does this to further stress that white people will never understand that she was happy through tough times, and often focus on her struggles than her well-being. In line 6 the speaker places alliteration on, “how happy you were to have,” to place emphasis on happy. The speaker places imagery on lines 9-11, to demonstrate, “how good the water felt when you got your bath / from one of those / big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in.” The speaker does this to focus attention on how nice the bath felt in contrast to the condition of the tub. There is a shift on line 27 where the speaker goes from second person to first person. This shift creates a more intimate experience in which the speaker makes it obvious the she was speaking about herself all along. The theme of “Nikki-Rosa” is that even through poverty, you can still be wealthy, she shows this in line 30, “Black love is Black wealth.”
In conclusion, Nikki Giovanni has left a large impact on society as determined African American female, especially in poetry. She has earned the recognition she deserves through many awards and honors. She has prospered through age in both her life and writing. Her poetry holds “the most elemental human longings and concerns — love, loss, friendship, loneliness, freedom — at once new and even more immutable” (Popova).