Synopses & Reviews
Chapter One 400 Mulvaney Street
The runway is like an aircraft carrier sticking out in the bay -- and you always get the feeling of drunken fly-boys in green airplane hats chomping wads and wads of gum going "Whooooopie!" as they bring the 747 in from Hackensack to La Guardia. It had been snowing for two days in New York and the runway was frozen. They never say to you that the runway is frozen and therefore dangerous to take off from, and in fact you'd never notice it because all the New York airports have tremendous backups -- even on clear days. So sitting there waiting was not unusual but I did notice this tendency to slide to the side with every strong wind, and I peeked out my window and noticed we were in the tracks of the previous jet and I thought: death has to eat too. And I went to sleep.
The whole thing about going to Knoxville appealed to my vanity. I had gotten a call from Harvey Glover about coming down and had said yes and had thought no more of it. Mostly, as you probably notice, artists very rarely have the chance to go back home and say, "I think I've done you proud." People are so insecure and in some cases jealous and in some cases think so little of themselves in general that they seldom think you'd be really honored to speak in your home town or at your old high school. And other people are sometimes so contemptuous of home that they in fact don't want to come back. This has set up a negative equation between the artist and home.
The Gem Theatre was on the corner of Vine and a street that runs parallel to the creek, and for 10 cents you could sit all day and see a double feature, five cartoons and two serials plus previews for the next two weeks. And I remember Frankie Lennon would come in with her gang and sit behind me and I wanted to say, "Hi. Can I sit with you?" but thought they were too snooty, and they, I found out later, thought I was too Northern and stuck-up. All of that is gone now. Something called progress killed my grandmother.
Mulvaney Street looked like a camel's back with both humps bulging -- up and down -- and we lived in the down part. At the top of the left hill a lady made ice balls and would mix the flavors for you for just a nickel. Across the street from her was the Negro center, where the guys played indoor basketball and the little kids went for stories and nap time. Down in the valley part were the tennis courts, the creek, the bulk of the park and the beginning of the right hill. To enter or leave the street you went either up or down. I used to think of it as a fort, especially when it snowed, and the enemy would always try to sneak through the underbrush nurtured by the creek and through the park trees, but we always spotted strangers and dealt. As you came down the left hill the houses were up on its side; then people got regular flat front yards; then the right hill started and ran all the way into Vine and Mulvaney was gone and the big apartment building didn't have a yard at all.
Grandmother and Grandpapa had lived at 400 since they'd left Georgia. And Mommy had been a baby there and Anto and Aunt Agnes wereborn there ...
Synopsis
This omnibus edition collects celebrated poet and activist Nikki Giovanni's adult prose: Racism 101, Sacred Cows and Other Edibles and seven (7) selections from Gemini: 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.
Synopsis
For the first time, the collected prose of national treasure Nikki Giovanni
Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet
Nominated for the National Book Award, this is a journey -- both private and public -- through the trials and triumphs of 1960s America.
Sacred Cows ... And Other Edibles
Winner of the Ohioana Library Award, these fresh and wryly humorous essays explore some of America's lofty institutions and the poet's pivotal life experiences.
Racism 101
This collection of essays contributes a vital and critical chapter to the debate on American national values.
About the Author
When Nikki Giovanni's poems first emerged during the Civil Rights, Black Power and Black Arts Movements in the 1960s, she immediately took a place among the most celebrated and influential poets of the era. Now, more than 30 years later, Nikki Giovanni still stands as one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America's political and poetic landscape.
Poet, activist, mother and professor Nikki Giovanni was born June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tennessee. While a student at Fisk University, she re-established the campus's Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) Chapter in 1965. In New York, 1968, after studying at University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Work and Columbia University's School of Fine Arts and, she self-published her first volume of poetry Black Feeling, Black Talk.
Over the span of 30 years as a poet, Ms. Giovanni has received nineteen honorary degrees from colleges and universities including, Fisk University, Smith College, Indiana University, Delaware State University, and University of Maryland. Her numerous awards include Woman of the Year for Ebony, Mademoiselle, Essence, and Ladies Home Journalmagazines; YWCA Woman of the Year, Cincinnati Chapter; Outstanding Woman of Tennessee Award; Ohio Women's Hall of Fame induction; Distinguished Recognition Award, Detroit City Council; McDonald's Literary Achievement Award for Poetry presented in the name of Nikki Giovanni in perpetuity; Outstanding Humanitarian Award, The House of Representatives of the Commonwealth of Kentucky; two Tennessee Governor's Award in the Arts and in the Humanities; the Virginia Governor's Award; and two NAACP Image Awards for Love Poemsand Blues: For All the Changes. Ms. Giovanni has been given the keys to more than a dozen cities, including New York City, Los Angeles, Dallas, Miami, New Orleans, and Baltimore. Most recently, she was named the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.
Nikki Giovanni is the author of 16 books of poetry for adults and children including the seminal Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black Judgement, Re: Creation, My House, The Women and the Men, Those Who Ride the Night Winds, The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni, Love Poemsand her most recent Blues: For All the Changes. Nikki is University Distinguished Professor/English at Virginia Tech. She continues to read her work all over the country.