A Good Cry
What We Learn From Tears and Laughter
-
- $13.99
-
- $13.99
Publisher Description
The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a firebrand, a radical, a courageous activist who has spoken out on the sensitive issues that touch our national consciousness, including race and gender, social justice, protest, violence in the home and in the streets, and why black lives matter.
One of America’s most celebrated poets looks inward in this powerful collection, a rumination on her life and the people who have shaped her.
As energetic and relevant as ever, Nikki now offers us an intimate, affecting, and illuminating look at her personal history and the mysteries of her own heart. In A Good Cry, she takes us into her confidence, describing the joy and peril of aging and recalling the violence that permeated her parents’ marriage and her early life. She pays homage to the people who have given her life meaning and joy: her grandparents, who took her in and saved her life; the poets and thinkers who have influenced her; and the students who have surrounded her. Nikki also celebrates her good friend, Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared before Angelou’s death in 2014.
"If there was a need for poetry that galvanized and inspired, there was also a demand for poetry that comforted and unified — and Ms. Giovanni provided on both counts." — The Washington Post
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
One of the gifts that makes poet Nikki Giovanni so special is the sheer beauty she can’t help but bring to just about every subject—especially the subject of people. That’s a theme you’ll notice throughout this gorgeously intimate collection of poems and essays. These works find Giovanni honouring the grandparents who helped raise her, the movements that pushed her forward, and the peers who’ve inspired her throughout her journey. (It’s inspiring to read about her relationships with the likes of Maya Angelou and Rita Dove.) But even when she deals with more difficult issues—like her abusive father in “I Married My Mother” or her nagging sense of guilt for the gifts of friendship she may never repay in “A РОЕМ (for Ethel Morgan Smith and Lucy)”—Giovanni's writing always seems to spring from a palpable sense of tenderness and hope. This pure, poignant feeling is what makes these works so invaluable—and so timeless.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Life doesn't begin and end with the memory of family trauma or past scars, as evidenced by this intimate collection from poet and activist Giovanni (Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid). Her clear-eyed and heartfelt work reflects on how internal and external influences shaped her artistic journey. For Giovanni, poetry is not a self-contained medium. Rather, it's a subtle and nuanced mosaic pieced together from the challenges of choosing to truly live rather than succumb to the stasis of merely existing. In a long prose poem that doubles as a brief biographical sketch, Giovanni writes, "It seems to me I've always been a small business. Now my business is poetry." For Giovanni, poetry wouldn't be possible without a self-propelled work ethic born out of the instability and violence she experienced in her youth. She also devotes several pieces to the late Maya Angelou, her friend and peer. Giovanni captures Angelou's cultural impact and ability to hold court with a wide variety of thinkers, artists, and celebrities: "When they make the movie Doc: The Story of Maya Angelou half the fun will be who appears at the table." Giovanni willingly confronts the uglier moments of her childhood while retaining a belief in the goodness of the human spirit.
