Nikki Giovanni: A Literary Biography (Women Writers of Color) - Hardcover

Fowler, Virginia C.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0275987523 ISBN 13: 9780275987527

Publisher: Praeger, 2013

Synopsis

This book offers a comprehensive examination of the life and work of Nikki Giovanni, one of the most prolific and well-known poets to emerge during the Black Arts Movement.

About this title

Book Description:

For more than 40 years, Nikki Giovanni has published award-winning volumes of poetry that explore the workings of the human heart, the lessons of the past, and the impact of the larger social and political world upon the individual. Throughout her work, Giovanni consistently created art and beauty from the lives and experiences of ordinary people.

From the Back Cover:

Nikki Giovanni began to write poetry in the 1960s when she was associated with the radical Black Arts Movement. She has since won a large popular following of a kind rarely achieved by poets in American society. Many ordinary people read, memorize, and recite her work, and her public readings are invariably well attended. Indeed, Giovanni's popular success has perhaps caused academic critics to underestimate the depth and breadth of her work. A strong-minded and independent woman, Giovanni has always resisted pigeon-holing, whether by literary critics or political ideologues. In this study, Virginia C. Fowler provides a ground-breaking survey and interpretation of Giovanni's work, thus filling a significant gap in contemporary literary studies. Fowler's close readings of Giovanni's work elucidate the orality of her poetry and the often subtle ways in which the poet has been influenced by spirituals, the blues, and jazz. In addition, the social, political, and biographical contexts that helped to shape Giovanni's poetry are sensitively delineated, as are the gender issues and personal concerns that became especially important in her verse of the 1970s. Giovanni's formal experimentation also receives its first extended treatment here. In the end, Giovanni is shown to be a poet of universal appeal, whose work reaches past barriers of race, class, and gender to touch the common humanity of her many readers while remaining deeply rooted in the rich tradition of African-American literature. This study will be valuable to all students of contemporary literature and especially to those interested in the contribution of women of color to our cultural life. An especially notable feature of thisvolume is a candid interview with Giovanni, in which the poet discusses her life, work, and contemporaries.

About this edition

• Publisher: Praeger
• Publication date: 2013
• ISBN 10: 0275987523
• ISBN 13: 9780275987527
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240