Before Nikki’s birth, Nikki’s family had to flee their home in Albany, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee in order to flee persecution by whites because of something her grandmother had said. She went to school in a segregated school for girls. Nikki played small roles in the Civil Rights Movement by doing small things as marching with other blacks to protest a recent hate crime. In Knoxville, she read signs and

Sacred Cows and Other Edibles is one book that truly brings out Nikki’s personality because she talks to her audience as if they were her friends. Yet, at the same time, she brings out the common theme of black pride and individualism:

Nelson Mandela’s work against apartheid was something that Nikki was against. However, since his movement for freedom there was such a big issue around the world, she received many threats. Nonetheless, Nikki was satisfied that she was able to make her voice heard upon the issue, as she had done many times on various subjects.

Nikki’s first award was controversial amongst the black community. The Ladies’ Home Journal magazine gave her an award at age thirty, “some black leaders said Giovanni should not have accepted an award from a mainly white organization. Giovanni disagreed.” (Pinkerton, pg. 63) Nikki Giovanni argued that people were being hypocrites by saying that. To her it was a sign of progress that at least some white people were recognizing a black lady for her works.

noticed other carious examples of segregation in her community. After her teacher, Miss Delaney, showed her the path towards a writing career, Nikki decided that she would write in order to help the Civil Rights Movement.

“Like most poets, I carry a two-hole folder with me almost compulsively. It’s not that I carry my ideas around so that should the occasion arise I can pull it out and say, in regard to some impending problem, ‘Oh well, a stitch in time saves nine.’…It’s just that like most writers I think I think best when I’m not actually thinking about it, so I carry a book that allowed me to put either something I have thought up as being very clever or, most likely, something that someone else said that I would one day like to use. ” (Giovanni, Let’s Sweat from Sacred Cows and Other Edibles pg. 99)

Nikki’s black pride has always been a key point in her writing career. Throughout all of her works, she tried to promote black pride to all of her readers. Her black heritage was the bottom line to her life and thus she wrote to reflect her experiences as a black woman during the 1960s. She paid tribute to all her family members for giving her the sense of black pride. An author once said, “She has written about most of her family members. She even dedicated a book-Spin a Soft Black Song-to her dog.”(Pinkerton, pg. 102)

Some topics in this essay:
Rights Movement, Cows Edibles, War Nikki, Changes Poems, Black Song-to, Black Song, African Americans, Nikki Giovanni, King Jr, James Baldwin, black pride, rights movement, civil rights movement, civil rights, sacred cows edibles, cows edibles, sacred cows, nikki decided, writing career, pinkerton pg, “poet people”, cows edibles pg, james baldwin, sense black pride, widely read poets,