Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking At The Harlem Renaissance Through Poems

by Nikki Giovanni

A remarkable collection of poetry by such authors as Paul Laurence Dunbar, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Amiri Baraka, with commentary and a discussion of the development of African American arts known as the Harlem Renaissance.

Genres: Poetry, African American, History

208 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 1996

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

[Imani ♥ ☮ · Rating 5 out of 5]

Before I read this book, I loved poetry. After reading this book, I loved it even more. :)

[Denitra Letrice · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have the honor of having an autographed copy and count it amongst my riches.

[Andrew · Rating 5 out of 5]

After Toni Morrison's recent death I heard Nikki Giovanni's tribute to her on the radio, and looked up what books of hers were available. This title stood out, but the book itself has been a bit disappointing really. There are plenty of great poems, and inevitably a few I wasn't so keen on, but the commentary didn't really live up to them. It almost seemed like it was written for children, although mentioning Amiri Baraka's use of the work motherfucker indicates that was probably not the case! There is a good section of biographies and a bibliography, so it's a source of further reading, as least!

[Ellice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a great compilation of poems by African Americans, both poems contemporary to, and more recent poems in the spirit of, the Harlem Renaissance. But what makes the book is the very casual, chill commentary by great poet in her own right Nikki Giovanni. She writes as if she's just talking to the reader as a friend, and picks out lines in the poems that strike her, while also drawing parallels to the larger experience of black Americans. This is a delightful book that is likely to appeal to some folks (including teens) who may not inherently love poetry.

[Nichole · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great poetry selection and really interesting ruminations and information from Giovanni as well.

[Lauren · Rating 4 out of 5]

A better subtitle for this book might be “Looking at African American Poetry in the 20th Century.” While this is a lovely survey of poetry by African American writers, only about half of the slim book contains poems penned by writers considered part of the Harlem Renaissance. Some of the writers featured weren’t even born until after the Harlem Renaissance. Yes, Dr. Giovanni makes a comment about how, to her, the Harlem Renaissance has never ended, but it’s a weak excuse. Doubly so since the poems she selected even demonstrate the transformation between the generations and their shifting worldviews.

This is otherwise a good collection – it reminded me of the best parts of being in school, of taking an English class and being introduced to authors I’d never before read and learning a bit about all of them. The information surrounding the poems is both academic and personal, the sort of things you’d hear if you asked a friend why they like a certain poem. Given the current trend of using the word “curate” for any number of things (clothing lines and albums, to name two), I’d like to suggest that this is a more accurate use of the world. Dr. Giovanni did indeed use her expertise to curate a collection of poems for readers interested in learning about the subject.

But the Harlem Renaissance is a distinctive time in history. Call this collection what it is: a survey of 20th Century African American poets. That’s not a bad thing: I enjoyed seeing how black writers reformed and reinterpreted the African American community’s place in the country and how different eras (especially the Civil Rights Movement) transformed that understanding. Highly recommended.

[Krista Stevens · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poetry can be as dangerous as a machete (I know machetes and that's why my husband has banned me from ever touching any of the machetes in our house - another story) as this compilation of Harlem Renaissance poems demonstrates. These poems address injustice, the great injustices visited upon African-Americans, picking that injustice up and defining it in a hundred different ways, making it malleable, mocking it, and all the while celebrating the indomitable human spirit that refuses to be cowed. I recognized about half of the poems and was thrilled to meet poems I had somehow missed. Nikki Giovanni writes about each poem - and her literary analysis mixed with historical and personal perspective would make this a book one that almost all high school students would be able to understand and access.

[Allison · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book uses poetry of a range of African American writers and commentary by Giovanni to tell the history of the Harlem Renaissance and how it affected even regular people in their everyday lives. The poems are grouped by author and the authors are arranged in chronological order by their birth years, to protray the progression of history and events.

[Dr. M. Butler · Rating 5 out of 5]

It was wonderful to read some great poems that many have not read.