Nikki Giovanni: The Poet Literature of the Black Community

: Black women have a long history and practise of activism that can be traced to pre-colonial Africa. Women writers of African descents have challenged the status quo of the cultural, political, and spiritual realms of their communities by using their skills to present women who challenge traditional roles and resist attacks of oppression. The paper deals with the suffering of women in general and black women specifically. The aim of the study is to give a voice to black women through Nikki Giovanni’s poetry, whom is considered the poets’ laureate. Her poems are like weapons against the oppressors. Using a cross-cultural analysis, will give voice to women who had long been silenced and devalued; women who, according to Zora Neale Hurston, "have the status of a mule".

‫ج‬ if you're Black you always remember things like living in Woodlawn with no inside toilet and if you become famous or something they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself …… (Line, 1-8) The poem explores the speaker's memories of growing up in the black district of Cincinnati, reflecting the happy moments with her family and her community. The speaker describes details of their simple happy life thence, saying: how good the water felt when you got your bath from one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in and somehow when you talk about home it never gets across how much you understood their feelings as the whole family attended meetings about Hollydale (Line,(9)(10)(11)(12)(13)(14)(15) Anyone can see how white people depict the black Americans, as poor and miserable. Accordingly, the speaker rejects such shallow prototype portrait. Instead, she shows the powerful love social ties in a black family in a black community way of life. The real happiness is that when you can spend much time with your mother; it is just the two of you, or when you take a bath in a big metal tub. In Chicago, however, it is used for barbecue. The white people satirize the blacks for not having a private toilet. Poverty never bothers the speaker, happy life for her is what shapes the black identity: your father's pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes And though you're poor it isn't poverty that concerns you and though they fought a lot it isn't your father's drinking that makes any difference but only that everybody is together and you and your sister have happy birthdays and very good Christmases (Line: 16-24) The white people do not recognize the positive qualities of the black speaker's early childhood because they assume that if someone grows up as black and poor, this can only mean that his life is filled with suffering. ‫ج‬ and I really hope no white person ever has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy (Line: 25-31) The speaker really sees the beauty of her simple life, and refuses to be judged by ridiculous white people, for she is sure that they are going to ignore the importance of the black community's close family relationships and social ties and only concentrate on the black hardships. Depicting, thus, a negative reflecting image of their life.
'Nikki Rose' as a title is derived from 'Rosa Parks', the park that witnessed the first black strike for black freedom. The story goes back to 1955 in Alabama, when a black woman refused to give her seat to a white person on a bus which was considered a custom in that time (Bennet, 1969, p.315). Rosa was a girl with different 'color of your skin made a difference in society'('Rosa Parks' line, 6) and that how the story starts:' In a bus, in the city of Montgomery,/A woman came aboard./Little did anyone know at the time,/That this woman would change the world" ('Rosa Parks' line, 1-4). She refused to give her bus seat to a white man, which is a common sense in America for a black man or woman should stand to give his seat to a white person, the time she refused, her " … actions started a very important movement, / In the history of African Americans./ It sparked a revolution for equality,/ And so the civil rights movement began." ('Rosa Parks' line,(17)(18)(19)(20).
'Rose' the name in the title of the poem of 'Rosa Parks', is connected to the idea of rejecting an old racist tradition which abuse physically and spiritually black people just because of their skin colour. Black people find the meaning of happiness and wealth different from the white. Giovanni rejects, "the current American standards of morality, justice, education, social behaviour, beauty and aesthetics" and replaces them by "black standards tailored to fit exclusive feelings and needs of the black American subculture" (Palmer, 1973, p.136).

'The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs Negro'
Nikki Geovanni has a dramatic style; she lets her readers see the other side of being minority or poor. It is that style that makes her as an international influential poet. Her participation with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s, gave birth to a new type of aggressive poetry like "The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs Negro". Her poetry that are written after the seventies concentrate more on personal relations and relationships within the black community (URL://www.brook/americanstudies/today/online).
The question of giving names for the Black American people is a sensitive issue connection with power and identity. The first time, the Africans were brought to America, they were stripped of their actual names and had names imposed by their masters. In the 1960s a new black power appeared, the Black Art Movement, which sought for their identity through art. Terms like 'nigger', 'negro' & 'Black' are usually used in a more inferior way to describe African Americans. (Nikki Giovanni (lorenwebster.net) Sarah Webster Fabio wrote a definitive essay on this topic for 'Negro Digest' magazine, in which she offered the following analysis: Scratch a Negro and you will find a nigger and a potential black man; scratch a black man and you may find a nigger and the remnants of a Negro. Negro is a psychological, sociological, and economical fabrication to justify the status quo in America. Nigger is the tension created by a black man's attempt to accommodate himself to become a Negro in order to survive in a racist country. Black is the selfhood and soul of anyone with one drop of black blood, in America, who does not deny himself (Fabio, 1968, pp.286-287).
"The True Import of Present Dialogue, Black vs. Negro" encourages black people to cast-off their middle-class satisfaction and create an angry revolutionary soul to gain liberation for the black community. In her poetry Giovanni endeavour to find a black artistic way that is clearly different from the Euro-American art.
R. Roderick Palmer thinks that Giovanni is "the most polemic, the most incendiary; the poet most impatient for change," (Palmer, 1973, p.144 (Giovanni, 1970, p. 11) The poem shows the different titles that was common among black people during the civil rights movements of the 1960s; 'negro', for the bourgeois mentality and 'black' for the revolutionaries. Giovannie asserts that the revolutionaries are the only group that will give a bright future for the black youth. Her poems are "tough, angry demands for action" (Palmer, 1973, p.144).

‫ج‬
Can you piss on a blond head Can you cut it off Can you kill A nigger can die We ain't got to prove we can die We got to prove we can kill They sent us to kill Japan and Africa We policed Europe Can you kill Can you kill a white man Can you kill the nigger in you Can you make your nigger mind die Can you kill your nigger mind And free your black hands to strangle According to Giovanni, adopting a revolutionary attitude is the only way, to save the black identity by becoming angry enough to kill. killing in the sense of rejecting actions, habits, and values that have kept black people enslaved. It is a metaphorically means of resistance. These include certain religious practices, economic habits, and behavioural actions that the black people must 'kill' if they seek freedom from continual subjugation by the white community. So she keeps repeating: Can The repetition of "Can You Kill"; is a reflection the repeated cruelty of the whites. In this poem, even the language used has a direct message. The poem shows that those whites use the blacks to kill for them in Vietnam, and in NATO, & SEATO, yet they marginalise them and deny their rights as humans and treat them as an inferior race. Since they are being treated in a harsh way, so Giovannie uses violent language to urge blacks to take action. This is summed up in the last two lines: "Learn to kill niggers/ Learn to be Black men." African American women poets, like Giovanni, with her powerful dramatic words' lines touch the lives of black community and intends to make Martin Luther King's dream a reality. A remarkable aspect of African American women's poetry is that it has risen above mere black themes to be acknowledged today as one of the best in American poetry.
Giovanni is an icon, powerful voice, what she believes, she wrote it as a title of her first book, "Feeling Black, Black Talk,". It is her black talk that she calls in it for their black Rights. Her voice expands calling for injustice and the right for 'vote', and from here came the idea of writing the poem below.

'Vote'
It's not a hug, or a toy at Christmas It's not a colored egg at Easter Or a bunny hopping across the meadow It's a vote, saying you are a citizen Giovanni calls for doing something serious, for the black community. The issue she is calling for is not a mere toy at Christmas, nor about an Easter egg, it is a call for voting and asserts "I don't care who you vote for", Just vote. Voting means you are a citizen and you have rights to demand for. By doing so she is accused for encouraging anger against white Americans. Actually, she is reflecting how black American people are marginalized and not considered as citizens as their peers of the white Americans.
Though sometimes it is traveling and sometimes a no. It can be male of female It can be right or left I can disagree But I am a citizen She believes to vote; it means that you exist and alive. She refuses to be silenced by others simply because of being different in skin colour. She shouts loudly they cannot silence our black voice; and it is part of their civil rights. I should be able to vote from prison I should be able to vote from the battlefield I should be able to vote when I get my driver's license I should be able to vote when can I purchase a gun When I'm in the hospital Or the old folk's home Or if I need a ride to the polling place I am a citizen Here Giovannie shows how cruelly they are being treated harshly, they cannot have a driving license, they suffer to purchase a gun, they are being treated ‫ج‬ as inferior to the whites in hospitals, schools, public places and everywhere. Here they have to put an end by showing they have not just a voice, but a strong voice to call for their rights. Accordingly, voting is not just a mere vote, it means they are alive and have the right to live decently. Voting means they exist and others must listen to their needs. Because simply those black people are citizens in the same country of the whites and they have rights to live equally. I must be able to vote. Folks were lynched Folks were shot. Folks communities were gerrymander Folks who believed in the Constitution were lied to Burned out, bought and sold because They agreed that all men and women were created equal. Folks vote to make us free It's not cookies or cake But it is icing that is so sweet Good for us, my country tis of thee. The ability to vote is the first step to their right path, it means stop shooting the blacks without reason, stop treating blacks as slaves, all people in the world generally and in America specifically. Simply voting sets them free, and it is for the best of All.
Nikki Giovanni is able to transform the black power into a brilliant art, using it to defend the black case. Her major themes throughout most of her poems is the suffering of the black community due to suppression and marginalization of their role in the society (Krishna, 2019, p.427).
Most of her short revolutionary poems, deal with the Black community issues that shows their heritage from blues and humiliation suffering of her people and illuminate all these matters in her poems. Giovanni tries strongly to show how blacks should stop looking at themselves like the whites look at them. They have their own colour, troubles, traditions, heritage, and identity, which gives them the right to live it as they want with the respect of the others especially whom live with them in the same nation. Simply, because God created all human equal.

Conclusion
The study shows that the African American poets of the Harlem Renaissance revolted against current laws and prejudices whether social or racial. In such poems as 'Nikki-Rose', 'The Import of Present Dialogue, Black Vs. Negro' and 'Vote'; she tries to revive the national spirit of the Afro-American people and lead them to be proud of their race and of their colour. She tries to preserve the black identity through reviving the African American habits, culture and social relationships. She uses these things as a counter hegemony against the oppression of the white race.
In an attempt to agitate the awareness of her fellow citizens and encourage them to take action, Nikki Giovannie adopts a dramatic style. For her, freedom, human rights and justice cannot realize through passive resistance. Nikki Giovanni expresses her disappointment at the loss of the American Dream of freedom. She used her poetry to express her concerns for man and country as well for the role of the woman in the twentieth century, for the conditions of the black, and for cultural diversity. Her poetry reveals her awareness of the ills of the society and a celebration of variety. Notwithstanding her disappointment, her poetry conveys a push for change, her sensibility and her celebration of American old values.