Nikki Giovanni

After looking up a biography of Ms. Giovanni at www.nikki-giovani.com I was very intrigued to read her poetry. Born in 1943 inTennessee and raised in the suburbs of Cincinati, Ohio, Nikki Giovanni quickly became a renowned writer and activist. She won many awards for her writing and has been named Woman of the year by several magazines. She currently teaches at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.
So, I finally read the poems assigned this week and am left wondering what took me so long to read them. I feel they are excellent portrayals of what it was like to be black and a woman in the 1960s and 1970s. Ms. Giovanni captured her desperation as well as her strength of  character. She wrote of the misconceptions people had about someone who grew up poor and black in the poem titled Nikki-Rosa. The character wants to focus on her good memories, but nobody understands how she could even have any good memories at all. The poem also speaks of black love being equal to wealth. Just the fact that her family was together was enough. It didn't matter that they never had much in the way of money and property.
In the poem I'm Not Lonely  Giovanni writes of a woman alone, but better off because the man that was there is now gone. She knows she should feel lonely, but all she really feels is relief that it is all over.
The last poem by Giovanni was my favorite. I like her play on words,and the be-boppy style in this poem. I also see this poem as a cry to her fellow citizens (especially the children) to really wake up and think about what they were doing. She was asking that they come to the realization that their situation needs to change or the future will be lost for the young ones of the day.