Nikki Giovanni: Nikki-Rosa and Ego-tripping

I just found out that Nikki Giovanni will be the keynote speaker at tomorrow's Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Convocation in Santa Cruz.  Once again, I will miss seeing a mentor-in-my-head, to borrow a phrase from talk show host, Wendy Williams. Last year, Maya Angelou was in town to celebrate National Women's History month and I missed her, too, because I teach several nights a week.

I walk in the footsteps of these two women, both of whom are world renowned poets, writer, educators, and social activists: I've loved them both since my teens. Their powerful way with words critically shaped my future dreams.

Nikki's poetry exploded into my life in the early '70s with the release of the album Truth Is On Its Way: Nikki Giovanni and the New York Community Choir. I get chills and goose bumps just thinking about Nikki reciting her poetry to the back drop of the magnificent young voices singing some of my favorite gospel music. 


In the mid-sixties, a handful of black students from my town were selected to integrate private schools in the state. You can believe me when I tell you, we weren't studying Nikki Giovanni in our English classes. Or, perhaps, I should only speak for myself. I was hungry to study black women writers, yet at the girls school I attended, they did not appear on my required reading lists. (The only piece written by a black author ever formally assigned was Manchild in the Promised Land by Claude Brown. If I recall correctly, my eighth grade English teacher had gone to school with him.) 

I was on my own to find the literary influences that would speak to my soul.


In my senior year of high school, two of us nerdy black private school kids, Richard Harris and myself, drove into the New York City to hear Nikki and the choir perform at Lincoln Center. 

She was, and still is, a tiny woman with a searing presence. She was like a meteor, bright and hot. Here, let me give you a taste.


Nikki-Rosa





Ego-tripping