Nikki Giovanni. - book reviews

African American Review, Fall, 1994 by Ann Folwell Stanford

In the early 1980s, when I was at Hollins College, Nikki Giovanni canceled a poetry reading, and Don L. Lee (Haki Madhubuti) was brought in as her replacement. Reading Virginia Fowler's Nikki Giovanni, I was reminded again of the irony of hearing Don Lee read his work instead of Giovanni--not just how disappointed I was, but how odd it seemed for such a thoroughly male-identified poet to be reading in Giovanni's place. To my mind, Giovanni is not only an African American poet, but also (resoundingly so) a woman. While Fowler's study is not an analysis of the gender implications of Giovanni's writing (and its critical reception) as such, or of Giovanni's conflictual relationship with writers like Don Lee and the Black Arts Movement, the book begins to illuminate these issues, tracking new ground for further study and exploration. Fowler situates Giovanni's work in the social and literary context from which it arose, mapping the contours of the Black Arts Movement and the conflicts for writers like Giovanni, whose art would not restrict itself to the limits of the Black Aesthetic.

Giovanni became serious about writing while a student at Fisk University, where she was also a member of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, and became involved with the then-flourishing Black Arts Movement, whose proponents, like Don Lee and LeRoi Jones (Amiri Baraka), applauded her for the "revolutionary" poems included in Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement (brought out as one volume in 1970 by William Morrow, after private printings in 1968 and 1969, respectively). Fowler points out that these same advocates, and others like them, were "writing scathing reviews and making vicious personal attacks" on Giovanni by the time My House was published in 1972. Fowler accounts for this hostility by pointing to Giovanni's refusal to follow the prescriptions of Black Arts leaders, the fact that she was a woman, and the fact that she far surpassed other poets in popularity (14). In a lengthy interview included in the book, Giovanni remarks bluntly about her associations with the poets of the Black Arts Movement, for example, LeRoi Jones, who, in Giovanni's estimation, "has always been an opportunistic man," a strong advocate of avoiding white presses who has himself published with William Morrow and Random House:

The guys and I were not going to get along because the guys were into power. They like to tell you what you should do. I remember reading Don[Lee]'s book, Dynamite Voices. And if he weren't such a poor writer I would have puked. The nerve of this son of a bitch, if I may, to say what my writing should be. I think he should deal with what his writing is. Don was too young and not nearly well-read enough to be a critic. Don just didn't know what he was talking about. But of course the joke to me was Don's position on me at one point that what I really needed was a good man, you know. Ishmael Reed used to say that to me all the time, too.... I got tired of hearing what was wrong with me. (137)

At every turn, Fowler attempts to set the record straight, to answer criticism and show Giovanni as a serious poet. Fowler pinpoints important issues in the criticism of Giovanni's poetry that have been faced by women writers for years, and complicated by the added component of race. She notes that "one of the charges frequently made by Giovanni's detractors is that, after she achieved success with her early volumes, she abandoned black revolutionary concerns and wrote about personal issues only" (27). While Fowler points out that Giovanni would disagree with the aesthetic assumptions embedded in the criticism, she does not proceed to scrutinize the gender implications of such a statement. Women have forever been criticized for paying too much attention to the small, "personal" details that are considered the stuff of neither revolutions nor belles lettres.

The contradiction between Giovanni's enormous popularity with "ordinary readers" and the marked critical/scholarly neglect of her work drives much of Fowler's study. Giovanni's first two books of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk and Black Judgement, were extraordinarily popular. Black Feeling sold 2,000 copies in its first year, and Black Judgement sold 6,000 copies within the first six months. Between 1972 and 1980, Giovanni gave as many as 200 lectures and readings per year throughout the country. She has won numerous awards and been awarded many honorary degrees. In addition to her well-known volumes of poetry and essays, Giovanni has also published several books of children's poetry (Spin a Soft Black Song, 1971; Ego Tripping and Other Poems for Young Readers, 1973; and Vacation Time, 1979, which won the Children's Reading Roundtable of Chicago Award). In 1987 PBS released the film Spirit to Spirit: The Poetry of Nikki Giovanni. Fowler asserts that Giovanni is "quite possibly the most widely read living poet in the United States today" (ix). Why, then, she asks, has Giovanni been neglected by most literary scholars and critics? Fowler attributes this neglect to "judgments derived from early reviews by detractors and extremely selective reading of her work itself" by scholars (ix). In her study, Fowler seeks to "initiate a serious dialogue about Giovanni's poetry by offering a critical and analytical overview of that work and by correcting misperceptions about her life as well as her work" and to provide "a starting point for future consideration of Giovanni's individual volumes of poetry as well as of her overall development" (x).