Remembering Nikki Giovanni

A Tribute to You, Nikki Giovanni:
Remember That Time?

by Winn

Do you remember that syrup-sticky time in March 2021, Nikki? Magic City is Birmingham, Alabama’s optimistic nickname. The thick air draped itself over the Magic City like a grandmother’s hand-stitched quilt. That afternoon, even crickets and birds chirped the news that you were coming to be our griot and to share, to electrify us in what is indignantly called the Tragic City.

When you began your indefatigable warrior’s journey in the 1960s, you would have been prohibited by state laws throughout the American South entry to any hotel frequented by whites, except to cook, clean, and otherwise service whites. And the Hilton Hotel, a bastion of caste-wealth. Yet you were profoundly instrumental in ripping off the bandage covering the oozing wound of systemic racism, classism, sexism, and homophobia. On that evening, in March 2021—remember, Nikki?—you were being honored in Birmingham’s Hilton Hotel. In Alabama. Not just permitted entry, but feted. 

Damn! as you often exclaimed in your inimitably invective-infused language. That evening’s event was sponsored by the African American Studies Program of the University of Alabama at Birmingham. Yes, at the very institution in whose doors, decades before, a recalcitrant Governor George Wallace had stood, exclaiming, “Segregation today! Segregation tomorrow! Segregation forever!”

Do you remember that time, Nikki? Your decades-long work helped destroy the bulwark of Wallace’s fulmination. On that night in March 2021, the Hilton Hotel ballroom was abuzz with excitement and anticipation. The Amazon love-warrior would speak. Remember?

I remember my awe at the energy coursing through my mother’s body that night. Others were excited to see you and hear you, too; but she was radiant. My mother sat ramrod straight, long locks secured in her lap as she turned this way and that, looking for you, her dark eyes flashing a light I seldom see. Then, you strode to the podium, face aglow and heart-mind ready to spit fire. Remember, Nikki? The room erupted in applause. Eyes scanned the adoring faces from above your reading glasses, imperious and omniscient. I saw Mom as she must have been when first you entered the 1960s scene, Nikki. No locks then, but an afro à la Angela and the freedom warriors around the world, whose tendrils reached ever up and out to transmute cosmic energy into revolutionary change.

Then, you spoke. Matter-of-fact and intimate, yet insistent. You started with something about, “I see some of you have brought your damn kids! Good! Now, you know how I talk, and there will be cussing, dammit!” With the invective fervor of a nimble slam artist and the assuredness of a Baptist preacher, you Amazoned us, your troops, into revolutionary loving through another breath, another day, another week, another year… another lifetime, if need be.

You remind me, Nikki, of Octavia Butler’s revelation, “The purpose of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.” That must have been a clarion call to you. You spoke with fiery ardor of wanting to go to outer space. You made it to 70,000 feet, where you beheld Earth’s curvature. If we all could see this firsthand, you believed, there’d be less ignorance and strife. We need to better see the unalterable truth of our mutual connection and interdependence.

Though a warrior, Nikki, you couldn’t travel further out in your physical body because of the left lung and right breast that were sacrificed to cancer. Yes, beyond the blood sacrifice of Amazon breast, you, word warrior, also sacrificed a lung. But your power of wordsmith-dreaming was unmitigated. You refused to say that you were battling cancer, but living with it.

You wrote space, dreamt space, and went into low orbit. In Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: We’re Going to Mars, you wrote:

It’s a life-seeking thing.

We’re going to Mars because whatever is wrong with us will not get right with us,
so we journey forth carrying the same baggage, but every now and then leaving one little bitty thing behind:
maybe drop torturing hunchbacks here,
maybe drop lynching Billy Budd there,
maybe not whipping Uncle Tom to death,
maybe resisting global war.

…

We’re going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change.

If Mars came here it would be ugly: nations would band together to hunt down and kill Martians,
and being the stupid, undeserving life forms that we are,
we would also hunt down and kill what would be termed Martian Sympathizers,
As if the Fugitive Slave Law wasn’t bad enough then,
As if the so-called War on Terrorism isn’t pitiful now,
WHEN do we learn and WHAT does it take to teach us that things cannot always be:
WHAT we want,
WHEN we want,
AS we want?

And they will tell them what to do:
To successfully go to Mars and back
You will need a song.
Take some Billie Holliday for the sad days and some Charlie Parker for the happy ones,
but always keep at least one good spiritual song for comfort.

You will need a slice or two of meatloaf, and if you can manage it,
Some fried chicken in a shoe box,
with a nice moist lemon pound cake,
A bottle of beer because no one should go that far without a beer,
and maybe a six-pack, so that if there is life on Mars, you can share.
Popcorn for the celebration when you land while you wait for your land legs to kick in,
and as you climb down down the ladder from your spaceship to the Martian surface,
Look to your left,
And there you’ll see a smiling community quilting a black-eyed pea,

Watching you descend.
Warrior. Poet. Revolutionary. Firebrand. Teacher. Lover. Fly on, warrior Nikki. I’ll put on the music of Valerie June’s Astral Plane, and search for you among the stars. Aché!