Source: Purchased
Paperback, 144 pgs.
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Make Me Rain by Nikki Giovanni is a collection of prose and poems, with some of the prose answering pieces in The New York Times. Giovanni is unapologetic as she should be and lifts up not only relatives and friends, but infuses her poetry with a hope and confidence that some poets don’t find until they’ve lived a long life. Her poems revel in the Black experience, while at the same time decrying the hatred, racism, and white supremacy that the Black community – herself included – have endured.
In “You Talk About Rape” (for Donald Trump), Giovanni pulls no punches at his rhetoric and blatant disregard of women as property and playthings for his amusement. She reminds us that Blacks endured this type of suffering from the early days of the slave trade and what is left and what you do with it is how you survive. “Give me left/overs/and I will create/a cuisine//” she says, adding that she can use scraps to create a quilt. As a woman, she’s a creator, a possibilities maker, and someone who will not stand still and wait for you to impose your will on her.
Not all of these pieces are about darkness. There are tender moments in which Giovanni wishes to become a sweatshirt to cuddle close to those she loves and how her aunt showed her love in the dresses she made for little Nikki. Some poems make us realize that mortality cannot be escaped even if you do win all the poetry prizes and accolades, but it is how we are loved that most endures when we’re gone.
Make Me Rain by Nikki Giovanni pays homage to not only Blackness and the struggles of men in war, women in societal war, and so much more. As she reminds us, there’s always that struggle between the light and darkness, but “I like to think if Dark/sitting on the back porch/maybe drinking a beer/rocking back and forth/waiting for Light to come/” and “The sun sees them/on the rocker/…and sends them little pieces of color/asking them to come together/for who can say No/to the sun/” (pg. 106)
RATING: Cinquain
Other Reviews:
Also check out my Interview with Nikki Giovanni
About the Poet:
Nikki Giovanni, poet, activist, mother, and professor, is a seven-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award, and holds the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, among many other honors. The author of twenty-eight books and a Grammy nominee for The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection, she is the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia.