Sacred Cows...and Other Edibles

by Nikki Giovanni

A collection of essays covering a wide range of topics--from delicate family relations and the life of a writer to black issues, consumerism, television, and the national anthem

Genres: Poetry, Essays, Memoir

167 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal and the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a Grammy Award for her poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she was named as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends". Giovanni was a member of The Wintergreen Women Writers Collective.
Giovanni gained initial fame in the late 1960s as one of the foremost authors of the Black Arts Movement. Influenced by the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power Movement of the period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American perspective, leading one writer to dub her the "Poet of the Black Revolution". During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet for other African-American women writers. Over subsequent decades, her works discussed social issues, human relationships, and hip hop. Poems such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.
Giovanni received numerous awards and holds 27 honorary degrees from various colleges and universities. She was also given the key to over two dozen cities. Giovanni was honored with the NAACP Image Award seven times. One of her more unique honors was having a South America bat species, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after her in 2007.
Giovanni was proud of her Appalachian roots and worked to change the way the world views Appalachians and Affrilachians.
Giovanni taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor at Virginia Tech until September 1, 2022. After the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant-poem at a memorial for the shooting victims.

Reviews

[Larry Bassett]

Do you remember 1988? Sacred Cows and Other Edibles was published in 1988. It was a leap year. On January 8th the Dow Jones falls 140.58 points, or 6.85%, to close at 1,911.31. In February the Winter Olympics are held in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. In March Jesse Jackson wins several Southern state primaries. In April The Last Emperor wins nine Oscars. In May after more than 8 years of fighting, the Soviet Army begins withdrawing from Afghanistan. In June a celebration of the 70th birthday of imprisoned ANC leader Nelson Mandela is held at a concert in Wembley Stadium. In July the Democratic National Convention nominates Michael Dukakis for U.S. President. In August the Iran–Iraq War ends, with an estimated one million lives lost. In September large, militant protests against the World Bank and IMF meetings take place in West Berlin. In October Super Mario Brothers 3 is released in Japan. In November George H. W. Bush is elected President. In December Pan Am Flight 103 is blown up over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people.

OK, that was a smattering of what happened in 1988. Some of the chapters and references are about issues that were current back then. Some are funny. But some I just don’t get: “…being Black carries a special responsibility in this recession” gets my attention but I am not sure if it is tongue in cheek or just offensive. And the section decrying handicapped parking and mandatory seat belt use must have been prescient in 1988. But not funny.

So, now I am wondering what others thought of Sacred Cows so I consult GR. This book is not well represented on GR: one review and 20 ratings. Fourteen of the rating gave it a four or five. Not bad but a small sampling. So this book clearly came and went before GR began. (Note that her book The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni gets 109 five rating out of 221 total ratings. Many readers obviously think she has done some very good writing.)

My eight year old has what she calls “opposite days.” When she says yes, she means no. When she says she likes something, she doesn’t like it. Nikki Giovanni is having an opposite day in the first dozen or so pages of Sacred Cows. I just didn’t get it. I could not hear the sarcasm or see the wink. Given the book title, I must be dense to have missed it.

See what you think of Giovanni’s mix. Deadly serious and humorous?

I am totally shocked by the Cincinnati father who raped his five-month-old baby while his wife was out shopping. Guess that will teach his wife to ask him to baby-sit. I’m shocked that child molesters now simply open day care centers to which unwitting parents take innocent children. I’m shocked that people, estimated in the millions, will die of starvation on this earth; that people sleep in the crevices and corners of the streets in our major cities; that mass murderers and presidential assassins get to plead mental anguish. Talk about a headache! I’m disappointed that Ronald Reagan thinks that trees pollute and that the Democratic Party nominated Walter Mondale. But hey! Who asked me?

But then she comes around the corner. In her autobiographical “Reflections on My Profession” on writing, Nikki Giovanni is truly a wordsmith. Her pages are packed with words: vibrant; serious and thoughtful and thought provoking mixed with some backhanded humor. In her prose you can imagine her poetry. Condensed prose. My early impression of two stars is moving up as I read.

Now before you say, “But I can’t read this book because my parents don’t have it on their book shelf like yours did,” let’s look at the online used books. There you are: dozens of hardback and paperback copies for under $2 plus shipping. For some wonderful reason, the hardbacks are often less expensive and will look better on your book shelf for someone to find in the future.

This seems to happen a lot to me: probably 30% of this book gets two stars but the other 70% gets four stars. Having read this book of prose, I am looking forward to reading some of her poetry in the future. I give this book three stars, thinking it is more like 3.5 stars. Nikki Giovanni was born on June 7, 1943; she is about three years older than I am. So we have lived in the same historical time period so that adds to me interest level. But, honestly, if you want to read Nikki Giovanni, read some of her books of poetry instead of this prose work from over 20 years ago.

I mentioned handicap parking and seat belt use earlier as maybe issues where Ms. Giovanni was saying the opposite of what she meant. But having read her diatribe about non-smokers trying to limit the right to smoke, I am not longer certain. Ms. G- is a smoker. Don’t mess with her when she says, “Non-smokers have gone way over the brink about clean air.” I think she meant it. So maybe handicapped parking and mandatory seat belt use rile her up too. Put this in my 30% category. In fact, put the beginning and ending of this book in the 30% category. The middle is pretty good. But her poetry is better.

[Marisa Urrutia Gedney]

honest and funny. I am still learning the flow of her style.

[Marisa Duarte]

Nikki Giovanni is famous for her poetry but also for her attitude and for speaking truth to power. In this collection of essays, Nikki writes what she thinks about the culture wars of the 1980s, about watching the rich get richer, the rise of a Black middle class that begins a narrative of self-victimization ('structural injustice made me do it'), and the failures of the women's movement (women are still wholly unpaid or underpaid for their contributions to rule by men.) She writes about sports, in lighter moments, and critiques the unexpected effects of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, namely, a false logic that once equality is achieved by law, we have to sustain it by maintaining proportional counts of people by skin color in offices and institutions. (Answer: equality is not about proportions, its about equal justice.) She also points out the aggressions of white society: a casual racist remark by a white contestant who loses to a Black family on a game show, white librarians and teachers accusing a white writer of racism for writing a children's book featuring Black characters, a Black friend accusing a Broadway show of racist characterizations without considering the viewpoints of the Black actors in the show. Nikki Giovanni's prose is funny, tongue-in-cheek, at times prescient, sardonic, disappointed, humorous, and filled with self-determination. Reading her words reminds me of the heartfelt and attitudinal opinions of my PhD advisor, my mother, my aunts, my old Tae Kwon Do instructor, and other people of color loved ones in my life who were in their 40s in the 1980s. When the rich got richer (when Trump that con, conned the best), the generation born out of the Civil Rights era were, in their families, among the first to achieve middle class power, and guess what: the mortgage came due, again and again. Reading this book during this moment when we are watching the Supreme Court erode the Civil Rights Act is hard. What new injustices will exist in this country tomorrow? For Nikki, our young people of color have got to learn to read, write, read more, and speak out.

[Tamara Jill]

What an amazing trip inside the brain of a fascinating person! What a great, raw selection of essays, I loved it.