Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet

by Nikki Giovanni

Book by Giovanni, Nikki

Genres: Biography, Poetry, Memoir, Nonfiction, Race, Literature, Autobiography

148 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

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

[Zefyr · Rating 3 out of 5]

Combination of some autobiographical essays with some previously published articles, offering a lens into Giovanni's early development as poet and thinker. That includes a level of homophobia, antisemitism, and Orientalism, things which shifted for her over time and which weren't the point of her writings here; they are simply unexamined tools consistent with the popularly accepted bigotries of the time. A central purpose of her writings here is to define her contemporary sense of race essentialism; again, that should be taken in context of her work overall as well as in context of the political writings of the times, but as her work forms part of that context it deserves greater attention. Race essentialism is bad, and in holding to it Giovanni heads down some bad paths, but seeds of insight come out along the way. I was particularly struck by her descriptions of building resources for Black people based on self-determined need, such as starting Love Black, a magazine less than 20 pages long, where all articles were less than a page: "Therefore, a brother could read the whole damned mag and really do two things: learn something positive about himself, and complete something he started." (p 47) Similarly, she criticizes activists whose approach squeezes others out, such as due to levels of militarism which scare out otherwise ready participants.

In one section she looks at how radical and activist thought is constructed; she identifies the role of the civil rights movement in forming a resource for developing particular thoughts on an individual level, and points out that the goal of liberation is not about producing a particular type of thought, but rather about producing the conditions in which a liberated people can think. In this sense, she's particularly speaking to a challenging emotional space for activists. "Everybody can't come up through the civil rights movement because it just doesn't exist anymore. When Black boys and girls from Mississippi to Massachusetts write J.B. [from context, presumably James Brown] letters complaining about This Is My Country Too (or was that a John A. Williams book?) then we ought to rejoice that Brown changes his position. The people we purport to speak for have spoken for themselves. We should be glad." (p 110)

Giovanni is particularly known for owning her sexuality: in here she talks about sex openly, centering it in discussion of masturbation and her own experiences of arousal rather than in desire for others. The one mention of her having sex with someone else, in fact, is only brought up in context of describing a series of efforts to provoke the heads of a school she attended. In fact, in the chapter "Don't Have a Baby till You Read This", in which she discusses the birth of her child Tommy, there is no mention of any act or person involved; Tommy is presented as the child of herself and a child with a whole family, her family. That isn't to say that her sense of sex is completely enlightened. One of the chapters focused on defining her race essentialism, "The Weather as a Cultural Determiner", makes some pretty yikes statements here in order to invert racist claims that Black people have "no ability to delay gratification", saying that "This is in my opinion not only true but good. We came from a climate that immediately gratified us, that put all the necessities of life at our fingertips...An African who had a jones about some chick could start out walking, find her, run off to the bush and be gratified. A white man had to control his sexual urge because the nearest nonrelative might have been and most likely was miles away...That's maybe one reason incest is more prevalent among white people than Black. That's also one reason Black people marry more than one woman. If you were cooped up in a cabin/castle with two or three women and you had a poor hunting season you were in trouble. Somebody would starve." (p 92) Rather than counter a racist claim by arguing that it is untrue, Giovanni leans into it, centering construction of a sense of African superiority, built around essentialized sexual practices and capacities of men based on race and supposed corresponding historical environment. It's not a good argument, and it suggests perhaps a gap in her exploration of how she was owning her sexuality at the time. But it's an interesting argument for refusing to play "that's not true!", a tactic that tends to fall into respectability politics -- and this is the core of what's interesting in Giovanni's writings. She's self-deprecating, highly aware of her own fallibility and of human fallibility, and pushes for the opposite of respectability politics: she pushes for Black people to be able to be complex humans, with shit to do and with inherent human value.

[Caitlin Conlon · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I wish this had a few more essays about Giovanni’s personal life (those were my favorites), I enjoyed reading this book. Giovanni’s stream of consciousness writing style was interesting, unlike anything else I’ve read in the genre. This isn’t an easy read, but it’s a quick and worthwhile one.

[Abe Shklar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Tough read. Some essays, especially the more autobiographical ones, are so fun to read and even at times whimsical! Others really show the inner thoughts of an angry (for good reason!) 22 year old militant black revolutionary. Certainly worth the read, but don’t expect much poetic prose.

[Will · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant window into the life and times of Nikki Giovanni. Some essays I found to be stronger than others and others I found to be pretty inaccessible since they were so linked to the time when she wrote them. I especially enjoyed the last essay.

[Dharma · Rating 4 out of 5]

I just love her.

[Robert C. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good writing is always a pleasure to read -- and Nikki Giovanni's "Gemini" is always an example of good writing. I am, in fact, being harsher with her here, awarding only 4 stars, because one holds a writer of her talent to a higher standard than, say, Lee Child with his Jack Reacher books, page-turners without resonance, fun in the same way that M&Ms at the movies are, i.e., forgettable after they're finished. Not so Nikki Giovanni or "Gemini". There is always a turn of phrase or an extended riff or, indeed, an entire chapter that resonates, rippling in the imagination like wavelets of water in a pond. But, to be candid, the book, her "Extended Autobiographical Statement", is a little dishonest -- because, really, it is essentially a compilation of previously published articles she wrote during "My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet" -- articles held together by about four current (as of 1971) chapters of actual autobiography. Those chapters are gold. As I noted, she can write: funny, human, insightful, self-ironic and ... beautiful. But the published articles are worth reading too, if aggravating many times, because they do give a sense of her thoughts and feelings during those first twenty-five years, albeit tailored to the specific publications' editorial and audience demands. And, being myself "a pale honky man" (her frequently used words in the articles), I was often angered and offended by what she wrote in those articles. And at the same time not. I lived during those times, a few years younger than Nikki Giovanni, but not by much, and those articles are an accurate reflection of the divisions and strife and young rebelliousness of the times. Nothing to be nostalgic about, for all those Golden Oldies lovers, but something to remember. Like I said, resonating.

[Danijel Danielski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stumbled upon an excerpt from Gemini on YouTube from her talk show interview with the late great Muhammad Ali. I must have listened to it about 50 times until I decided that I must have this piece of art in physical form to enjoy it further. This book just oozes personality, defiance, love, young rebellious nature but also wisdom and acceptance. It shows the experiences that formed such a profound strong character, while also not shying away from the most vulnerable moments in her life. It simply amazes me that someone had so much personality, wisdom and courage so early on in life, especially considering her unprivileged circumstances. It was an extremely enjoyable piece that left me with a different perspective on love, parenting and acceptance amongst other things.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

My note from September 1997 is "very dated." Maybe it's time to read more.

[Bettye · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this book about the early life of poet Nikki Giovanni. As you would expect her voice is unique, sharp, funny and honest. Those are the best traits for a good memoir.

[ira · Rating 4 out of 5]

writing at the speed of thought . I want to be understood

[Erin O'Riordan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I have two objections to this book: antiSemitism and homophobia. Giovanni seems to imply that lesbians are large, frightening women who use their size and strength to trap and sexually assault heterosexual women. I hope she became much more enlightened in her second 25 years of being a Black poet.

[Maheen · Rating 5 out of 5]

What an amazing treatise. Completely inspired. She is a genius.