|
 Nikki
Giovanni
Poet and biographer Nikki Giovanni
(center) poses with students from Harlem, New York's
Family Academy, where she participated in a week long
residency through The NBF's Family Literacy outreach
program.
The Fire Next Time, by James Baldwin is the
book that influenced my writing more than any other
because it taught me the truth could be plainly said.
Baldwin's searing essay utilized all the elements of
my life: the Church and the Bible (and they are
definitely different); the musical cadence of gospel
songs and the blues; plus, which is most important to
me, I saw that the evidence of my own heart and mind
could inform my muse. I did not have to seek an alien
form in order to tell the stories of my people.
If I were choosing five books that I think made a major
difference to me I would select:
The Selected Poems of Langston Hughes
The Selected Poems of Gwendolyn Brooks
The Negro Caravan: Writings by American Negroes,
edited by Sterling A. Brown, Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses
Lee
Dark Symphony: Negro Literature in America,
edited by James A. Emanuel and Theodore L. Gross
Eight Men, by Richard Wright
|
