Nikki Giovanni spoke before a packed Finney Chapel last Thursday, Feb. 21. Her talk was advertised as “A Night With Nikki Giovanni” and in a medley of personal anecdotes, historical story-telling and poetry, the highly charged poet, professor, and political activist opened herself to the crowd. “It’s so much fun to be alive,” Giovanni crooned before a fascinated audience.
“Nikki Giovanni is an incredible and dynamic speaker who says things other people are afraid to say. She’s a bad-ass, really,” senior Sara Lucas said.
“Ride me, poem, I think I’ve got the blues,” spilled the final line of one of the many poems that were intertwined in Giovanni’s talk. As she described her own journeys of historical discovery, from visiting the bridge in Selma, Ala. to following Emmit Till’s train ride down to Money, Miss., Giovanni showed how inextricable the past is from the present. Giovanni paid tribute to Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., and called special attention to the Pullman Porters, black men who worked on Pullman railroad cars, passing money and newspapers from north to south and looking after the black passengers as best they could.
“Nikki Giovanni is one of the foremost flagbearers of our consciousness and our conscience on racial issues. She is an astonishing reader – so energetic, so expressive. Not only a poet but a riveting storyteller, as anyone who was in Finney that night knows. Her stories blended into her poems, gave them a setting; sometimes it was hard to tell where one stopped and the other started, because her presence shines through them both,” Creative Writing Professor Pamela Alexander said.
“[Nikki Giovanni] was a rockin’ story teller. Another bonus was that she was the first speaker I’ve heard in Finney who encouraged us all to have sex,” sophomore Page Neal said.
During the question and answer portion of the talk, a student asked Giovanni if she had any advice for aspiring writers. “Always do something that scares you…the truth will lead you to strange places,” Giovanni offered, expounding on a prominent theme in her talk, the importance of keeping true to oneself. “When you find yourself alone, you have to know why you’re [here],” Giovanni soberly told the audience.
The enormity of the material encompassed by Giovanni’s talk awed the crowd but did not silence it. The interactive performance, in which the crowd laughed in agreement, was markedly different from traditionally one-sided poetry readings. “Did you hear the audience in Finney calling out some of her lines as she read them? You can’t get a better audience than that — and she did such a good job of reaching out, of being there heart and soul, so everyone there knew she was talking to them,” Alexander said.
Giovanni has written nearly 20 books of poetry and essays. Her newest book, Blues: For All the Changes, recently made the Los Angeles Times Bestseller List. No poet had ever made this list before. She has been teaching literature and creative writing since 1989 at Virginia Tech. The poems Giovanni read last Thursday were from an upcoming book, a compilation of tributes to Martin Luther King, Jr. by various artists. Giovanni ended her talk in barely visible tears over the death of artist Tupac Shakur, for whom she tattoed “Thug Life” on her arm.
The Hewlett Committee was able to bring Nikki Giovanni to Oberlin through the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation’s Common Ground Grant. The grant is designed to bring students from different ethnic, racial, religious, gender and sexual orientation groups together.