An Evening with Nikki Giovanni

The event (An Evening with Nikki Giovanni) was very insightful. I really enjoyed listing to Mrs. Giovanni as she reflected on the past and spoke about her views and opinions of our world today. I found her to be very funny, relatable and down to earth. When she first started speaking that night she spoke about where we are at today and she commented on the fact that really the only black woman that go notable recognition after she died was Lena Horn. She said there are many black women that have achieved so much in there lifetime that also deserved recognition. This lead her to talk to the audience about her family and a woman she knew and she read a poem out of her book called 100 Best African American Poems called The Aunt (by: Mary Agnus). She stated that the hip-hop generation is taking over and how now days you can find Hip hop almost everywhere you look. Nikki Giovanni even said that one of her favorite rappers was Tupac and how he was such a poet. Another topic she touched on was the fact that we need to get back control of our bodies and mind and how now days there are way to many black men being locked up and all of their rights are being taken from them and she compared them to slaves. She spoke on the fact that one of your most important rights is to vote and how we are responsible for putting these people in office. Mrs. Giovanni said that she loves to watch TV and it was funny when she ran threw some TV history and stated shows she considered stupid. This all lead to a statement she made about how accidental learning is very important. This basically meant that a lot of things you know and make you who you are were not necessarily things you were intentionally trying to learn. She said you can learn things you never thought you would learn by just noticing you surroundings and taking in new things from everyday life. It was interesting when she told us that she knew Rosa Parks and she told us that she was a funny beautiful woman and how her actions were a result of destiny. She also spoke on Emmett Till and how as a result of events surrounding what happened to him it sparked a chain of change. Finally Nikki Giovanni closed on how she believed Facebook was a political network instead of a social network. Then the evening closed with some questions from the audience.