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I Had a Good Cry With Nikki Giovanni Over Trump
The ‘Poet of Black Revolution’ is still radically conscious and ready to take on the world
The Black Arts Movement was considered one of the most prolific of the mid-1960s and 1970s. Inspired by the Black Power movement, it was a creative collective of politically conscious poets, composers, and writers who opposed the notion of traditional Western values. These revolutionary artists created new channels for the culture, and among them was Nikki Giovanni.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., the 76-year-old is the embodiment of “wokeness.” That one of her recent poems in her latest collection, A Good Cry (2017), is appropriately titled, “Black Lives Matter (Not a Hashtag),” is just another example of how she uses her powerful tools of self-expression to draw parallels between poetry and protest.
Recognized as the “Poet of Black Revolution,” Giovanni has taken on topics from race relations and social justice to Black women’s empowerment. More than 50 years after the release of her first published body of work, Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement (1968), her radicalism is still a force to be reckoned with. I traveled to the campus of Virginia Tech University in Blacksburg, VA to interview the renowned author, who’s been with the university since 1987.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
ZORA: How did growing up in Ohio during the 1940s and 1950s shape you into the woman you are today?
Nikki Giovanni: Honestly, I don’t know how I would have been shaped without my upbringing in Ohio. How do you subtract who you are from what you are (laughs)? The answer is simple. You can’t. But what affected me the most was my time in Knoxville, TN. I lived with my grandparents during the formative years when I was a teenager in high school.
I wrote a poem called “Nikki Rosa” and the first line is “childhood remembrances are always a drag if you’re Black.” I believe those are the years you look back on to make a decision about whether or not you were happy. In hindsight, you probably weren’t because it is really hard to think of being happy and, despite what…
