New York Times Features Nikki Giovanni in Best of 2020

The New York Times's Best of 2020 folio is here! We're delighted to see that Elizabeth A. Harris's article published yesterday shines the spotlight on Nikki Giovanni, whose latest collection of poems and prose, Make Me Rain (William Morrow), appeared in October of this year. "Black love, Black struggle and Black joy have long been at the center of Giovanni’s work," Harris writes. "Her newest book is thick with affection for African-American people in their everyday lives." Picking up from there: 

“There is no / way not to like Black Americans,” she writes in “Lemonade Grows From Soil, Too.” “We try to practice love. / We use the chicken feet to make a stew; we take the scraps of / cloth to make the quilt. We find the song in the darkest days / to say ‘put on your red dress, baby, ‘cause we’re going out / tonight,’ understanding we may be lynched on the way home / but knowing between that cotton field and that house party / something wonderful has been shared.”

“I could never have written ‘Make Me Rain’ 50 years ago,” Giovanni said. “I thought 50 years ago that I could make a big difference in the world. What I know now is that I will not allow the world to make a big difference in me. That’s what’s incredibly important. I’m not going to let the fact that I live in a nation with a bunch of fools make a fool out of me.”

Continue reading Harris's article at the New York Times.