Quotes from Nikki Giovanni

I don't need an overseas enemy / I have a father

Silence I wondered why Grandmother and Grandpapa could sit in Silence on the front porch She smoked a cigarette He didn't Sitting on the swing in Silence I washed the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen trying to figure out why they sat in Silence Then I got to be my own age with my own deck and my own person and I understood

I mean, that the New World black woman needs a little of the Old World black woman in her, and the other way around. I don't think that they are completely fulfilled without the other.

it's white male life. The master narrative is whatever ideological script that is being imposed by the people in authority on everybody else. The master fiction. History. It has a certain point of view. So, when these little girls see that the most prized gift that they can get at Christmastime is this little white doll, that's the master narrative speaking. "This is beautiful, this is lovely, and you're not it.

and neither of them ever said what they meant and i guess nobody ever does

I do wonder sometimes, I do wonder what it is about the human mind that goes to pain and degradation. I do wonder what it is. We talk about original sin. We talk about ignorance. We talk about people not having had a chance. We talk about poverty--a bunch of things--but there is something not quite right about the human species, because, given half a chance, we'd be eating one another.

what you doing here she asked i'm a poet i said that ain't no reason to be uppity

honey, ain't never been wrong yet you better get back to the city cause you one of them technical niggers and you'll have problems here

Because I think we forget something about slavery: There was an enormous amount of sexual license. People talk about, well, the money; the economy; the this…But you realize if you own a human being, you really own them. You can get them—boys, girls—to do anything you say, on pain of death. That's what it means to own a human being.

and sometimes on rainy nights you see an old white woman who maybe you'd really care about except that you're a young Black woman whose job it is to kill maim or seriously make her question the validity of her existence

If I deal with my block and you deal with your block, we'll have two good blocks.

We've got to live in the real world. If we don't like the world we're living in, change it. And if we can't change it, we change ourselves. We can do something.

I cannot be comprehended except by my permission

There are things. . . that should not be touched: Books when your hands are sticky with chocolate Cars when your clothes are covered with oil Men when your heart does not love them

and as soon as i die i hope everyone who loved me learns the meaning of my death which is a simple lesson don't do what you do very well very well and enjoy it it scares white folk and makes black ones truly mad

so julian bond was elected president and rap brown chief justice of the supreme court and nixon sold himself on 42nd street for a package of winstons

Ntozake Shange tells us it's not so good to be born a girl . She does not object to being born a girl. She objects to what it means when you are born a girl. She objects to the way that girls are treated. She objects to the way that our dreams are stifled. She objects to the way that we are not taken seriously, we are there as some sort of plaything

We need to watch For the scared and the vulnerable One day it may be Us

and i've begun (as a reaction to a feeling) to balance the pleasure of loneliness against the pain of loving you from Balances

And mostly we need to pick and choose Who we listen to so we follow our own path Yeah we need to follow our own path

Though I worship nothing (save myself) You were my savior—so be it And it was Perhaps not never more or ever after But after all—once you were mine

called the sun today but she was busy fucking behind the gray clouds I asked Ginney my good friend who makes things work to call But the sun wouldn't answer her either I opened a bottle of Champagne and the fruit flies surrounded the top Lord Lord Lord donald trump must be president

Of the many foundations upon which humans rest, words are probably the most solid.

Three days later when his body was found they wanted to bury him in Mississippi. I wanted him home in Chicago. I wanted the world to see what they did to my boy. I wanted Emmett's death to be the last death. I wanted Emmett's death to kill American innocence. I wanted Emmett's death to be not only the death of my boy but the death of innocence. I wanted Mississippi, I wanted America, to give us justice. And I prayed that I would live long enough to see it.