Who Gets To Tell Our Story?

By W. F. Twyman, Jr.

Carl Rowen, a former journalist and author, once said he got some of his best ideas from simply talking with taxi cab drivers. Rowen married into my wife’s distant family. Born in 1925 in Tennessee, Rowen lived the racial life that haunts our present today. I do not fault whatsoever Rowen’s meaning in life derived from all whom he observed and knew. That’s how we humans derive meaning from life. Rowen passed away in the year 2000. The corpus of his life reflected stories from those all around him in the years 1925 to 2000: South of Freedom (1952), The Pitiful and the Proud (1956), Go South to Sorrow (1957), Wait till Next Year: The Life Story of Jackie Robinson (1960, Just Between Us Blacks (1974), Breaking Barriers: A Memoir (1991, Growing up Black: From The Slave Days to the Present - 25 African-Americans Reveal the Trials and Triumphs of Their Childhoods (contributor, 1992), Dream Makers, Dream Breakers: The World of Justice Thurgood Marshall (1993), The Coming Race War in America: A Wake-Up Call (1996). Readers, do you notice a theme, a shall we say pattern? Of course, you do.

I get some of my best race ideas from in-laws.

A few days ago, I received a text message from family members. The moment was a solemn one — NYTIMES: Nikki Giovanni Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy, Dies at 81. The obligatory NY Times obituary was attached. I saw a colorful image of Giovanni, wearing a black top with close cropped white hair and framed by tree branches. Giovanni was captured in her senior years. I felt sad as it is always a moment for reflection when a notable person passes away. I preferred to remember the young poet with the large Afro. Something about Afros I find attractive and stirring.

I once told my colleague, Ami, everyone wore Afros in the early 1970s. My Jewish Ami laughed and quipped not everyone was wearing Afros! Those kinds of light-hearted exchanges are the best of life.

I enjoyed this digression. True story — when I was going out with Debra at the law school, Debra super curled her straight silky hair into a blonde Afro. Some Jewish individuals have natural Afros but Debra did not. The things we do for love, the things we do for love.

Notice how my subconscious mind really doesn’t want an intellectual scrape with in-laws over Nikki Giovanni. I really am a creature of harmony and one love in the world. Imagine. But for writing to serve man, I must be true to what I observe and see. Otherwise, what am I doing?

The text message included a fawning picture of my in-laws framing Giovanni in the middle. The event was a book signing and fan love was in the air. The parting message was Good Morning, Poetess Nikki Giovanni has joined the Ancestors. Her earthly battle with lung cancer is over. I wrote Very saddened by the news. May her soul rest in peace. She has left an enduring legacy. My wife wrote Oh my, that’s sad news. She will certainly be missed. What a legacy she leaves behind.

Let’s talk this morning about the legacy left behind by poet Nikki Giovanni.

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Poets are angels on earth if you ask me. The ability to tune into the spiritual all around us and bring into our physical world words of transcendence, well, we are in the realm of the mystical. Why do we write poetry to seduce lovers? Why does the right poetic aim leave us feeling larger than ourselves? You know what I mean. When I delivered my sister’s eulogy, what did I cling to as the universal I had now lost in my life? It was the poet in my sister. My sister could drop into the spiritual realm and retrieve gems about human existence that I could only marvel at. We were not twins, however, the poet in me was her soulmate in life. My sister the poet — a marvelous bridge to Giovanni as poet.

“Black Love is Black Wealth” — a young Nikki Giovanni

Sister Nikki Giovanni existed as a bright star in the firmament for me. When I grew up in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I did not live in color consciousness. Others did but not me. When I chose to become black under the roof of Grandma’s red brick home, my shepherd was Earl G. Graves, publisher of Black Enterprise Magazine. That’s just the truth. The Black Power Movement and Black Nationalism did not exist for me. And yet, I held the greatest respect for anyone black who achieved lofty aims. I learned through the zeitgeist at the University of Virginia that Giovanni was an esteemed poet. And that was enough for me. My faint and distant admiration was uninformed, almost herd like and rote.

When Giovanni passed away, I became curious. I wanted to learn more in light of the outpouring of love from my in-laws. Who was Giovanni the poet? The more I learned, the more I learned I did not know. For example, I could not name a single poem penned by Giovanni. I could easily rattle off five or so black entrepreneurs from The Black Enterprise listing of the Top 100 Black Businesses in the 1970s. When it came to the poetry of Giovanni, I suffered from a blind spot. And here is why.

I found Giovanni’s most famous and profound poem, Nikka-Rosa. Did Nikka-Rosa touch my soul? Did Giovanni’s poetic masterpiece carry me away to another place and time? The effect left upon me was a mixed bag. How so?

“childhood remembrances are always a drag

if you’re Black”

I could see Giovanni’s point. She was born in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. But I never felt my childhood was always a drag. And I was a black child growing up outside of Richmond, Virginia in the late 1960s and early 1970s. I always felt my ancestors were watching over me. I felt my life was a Pilgrim’s Progress, that I had a duty to aim high and achieve in life. I also was aware of my Great Aunt Daisy Kincaid Brown. Great Aunt Daisy was up in years when I entered the world and she passed in the 1970s. I have no memories that Aunt Daisy’s childhood remembrances were always a drag. In fact, Daisy was born in Knoxville, Tennessee in the late 1800s and graduated from Morristown Normal College in the Class of 1919. I am looking at her college class picture right now. If Aunt Daisy born in the late 1800s in Knoxville left no stories of childhood remembrances as only a drag, why would Giovanni born in the same place in better times be so downcast on her childhood? It doesn’t make sense to me.

“you always remember things like living in Woodlawn

with no inside toilet”

Yep, I can attest and testify to the outhouse experience of some. But most black people I knew of had indoor plumbing and toilets. It was the white Twymans shivering at Oak Lawn who lacked inside toilets as of 1965. Why capture part of the story in one’s poetry?

“and if you become famous or something

they never talk about how happy you were to have

your mother

all to yourself and

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”

I like this poetic image of simple life. For me, Giovanni has the touch of the divine. She summons up memories of family and the human condition free of dogma and slogan words. We as readers want to feel we are not alone on this ball of dirt in the great darkness of space. Giovanni draws me in as a poet.

“your biographers never understand

your father’s pain as he sells his stock

and another dream goes”

Who among us cannot be moved by a dream deferred, the misalignment of one’s truth and outside expectation? I am on Giovanni’s side. Keep writing, my sister.

“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”

There is a line of recognition and misalignment for me in these words. I will put the words of poor and poverty aside for a moment. As well as the words of fighting a lot. My father did not drink. Did my father ever drink in his life? Hard to say but I doubt it. Did I have drinking uncles? Yes, I did. I also had numerous uncles who felt drinking alcohol was against Christian living. The realities of the teetotaler dad and uncles co-existed with uncles who kept their bars stocked well. Once again, Giovanni is capturing a slice of life but reality is multiple realities co-existing within families.

As for a very good Christmas? This is a ridiculous thing to say now that I am sixty-three years old but it is true. Santa favored my sister over me. I would come to the Christmas tree in the mornings and see my presents. My younger sister would have more presents than me. My Dad called my sister “Pumpkin.” I had no nickname. I didn’t complain or squawk about it at all. I just observed life and the bias of Santa/sigh.

(I should be careful here. Many family members suspect I play favorites. I deny all accusations of favoritism.)

“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”

Once again, I want to be moved but something gets in the way. I want anyone, regardless of race or skin color, to write about me. Please do. I care whether you can capture the essence of me. I care not that you are white, black, brown, yellow or red. And, if you write my life story one day, write how I came into the world one way and left the world more attuned to me. Write that I loved and lost and found love again. Tell readers my childhood was neither hard nor easy. It just was, was a southern small-town suburban childhood where ancestors watched over me, my parents loved me as the bright future, and my sister and I never found peace together, save in our poetry of life.

Conclusion: Nikki Giovanni should be mourned as all angels of poetry should be mourned. The Afro haired poet from Knoxville, Tennessee perceived a different reality from me. She leaned into her racial identity and altered the course of Black Identity. Although I only reviewed one of her poems, I can tell she lived in a different reality of Blackness. She ran her race in life well and my words are genuine. I think of my Great Aunt Daisy Kincaid Brown born in Knoxville, Tennessee like Giovanni. Aunt Daisy was Grandma’s sister-in-law. Daisy was not a poet but her legacy out of Knoxville would be more meaningful and enduring for me — real estate investment, public school educator, NAACP secretary/treasurer.

If there are over 40 million black Americans, there are over 40 million stories, experiences and perspectives. Who gets to tell our story?

The Poet Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024), Native of Knoxville, Tennessee