Nikki Giovanni - Nikki-Rosa

            I enjoyed reading the poem “Nikki-Rosa” by Nikki Giovanni.  This was a short poem but it was delivered with usual marks of poetry through punctuation and capitalization.  The narrator in the poem spoke directly to her audience.  The title of the poem suggested the blending of the personal life with the public or political one.  This poem also shows the development of an activist, from a girl Nikki to the revolutionary Rosa.  The name Rosa refers to Rosa Parks, a Civil Rights activist.  The poem is about a mature black woman who is recalling on her childhood.  She recognizes that not many people understand the poverty in which she lived in and that it did not worry or bother her.  There is no common rhyme in this poem.  This poem is more of an ongoing thought of something that has been building up inside of her for years.  Through this poem she is able to breathe and get every last word out before she loses it.  This poem has an emotional style to it.  The poem is written into shorter and longer sentences that make it have a soft style to it.  She did an amazing job in letting the readers see another side of being poor and a minority.  Living in poverty is not an overwhelming hardship but that it is full of plenty of happiness.  If a person will look anywhere long enough then they will be capable of seeing that beauty.  This poem displays how a white person cannot understand her true happiness.  The speaker feels that white people see black children as unhappy, uneducated, and deprived of chances in life due to a lack of money and material possessions.  She shows her readers that family is more important than money.  In this poem the speaker challenges society’s assumptions that poverty equals unhappiness when she states her life to be rich with memories and love.  Money cannot purchase memories and love.  My mom also told me that “Money cannot buy happiness.”  After reading this poem, I can see the statement that my mom made is very true.  Family is what makes happiness.                                        

Nikki Giovanni - Introduction and Biography

Nikki Giovanni was born on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee.  Her real name is Yolanda Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni and she was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio.  She was the younger of two daughters in a close-knit family.  She gained an intense appreciation for her African-American heritage from her outspoken grandmother.  She attended Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee in 1960, where she worked with the school’s Writer’s Workshop and edited the literary magazine.  In 1967 she received her Bachelor of Arts.  She organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati.  She entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University in 1967.  She is a lung cancer survivor.  She received many honors including three NAACP Image Awards for Literature in 1998, the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996, as well as more than twenty honorary degrees form national colleges and universities.  She has been given keys to more than a dozen cities, including New Orleans, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles, and New York.  She has been named in several magazines as woman of the year, including Ladies Home Journal, Ebony, Mademoiselle, and Essence.   Giovanni was the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.  She has served as a poetry judge for the national Book Awards.  She was also a finalist for a Germany Award in the category of Spoken Word.  Currently she is a Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech, where she has taught since 1987.  She is one of the best-known African-American poets who reached fame during the late 1960s and 1970s.  Her distinctive and understanding poetry confirms to her own developing awareness and experiences such as from child to a young woman, from a simple college freshman to an experienced civil rights advocate and from a daughter to a mother.  Her poetry conveys strong racial pride and respect for family.  Her casual style makes her work understandable to adults and children.  She has published several works of nonfiction, children’s literature and recordings, including the Emmy-award nominated The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection (2004).  She is a frequent lecturer and reader.  She has taught at Rutgers University, Ohio State University and Virginia Tech. Giovanni taught at Virginia Tech during the tragic shooting in 2007 and wrote a chant-poem which she read at the memorial service the day after.  She continues to supplement her poetry with occasional volumes of nonfiction.  She has published at least five books of poetry in ten years.  She enjoys writing and it is part of her life.                                                  

Poetry Foundation. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.

"Nikki Giovanni." Poets.org - Poetry, Poems, Bios & More. Web. 19 Apr. 2011.

Tillie Olsen - I Stand Here Ironing

                I enjoyed reading the short story “I Stand Here Ironing” by Tillie Olsen.  This story is about the silent burdens of motherhood.  Olsen implies that the role of an unselfish mother that society expects women to accept is actually an obstacle to any kind of successful self-discovery.  Motherhood actually locks women in lives burdened with labor and extreme responsibility rather than helping women achieve self-actualization.  She offers a picture of motherhood left empty and trimmed of any romantic enhancement.  She gives the reader a character who compulsively reflects on the stricter, harsher experiences of family life.  The speaker reduces certain exaggerated notions concerning motherhood especially in particular with the importance of the child-parent bond.  The narrator no more understands Emily than the teacher or counselor who invites the mother’s face-to-face meeting.  The speaker is not immoral, rude, or intentionally neglectful but she is a conflicted victim of circumstance whose personal resources can go only so far.  The fact that the narrator was not able to participate in Emily’s life may have led to the vague issue that currently overwhelms the young woman.  The narrator is able to meet the basic physical needs of her children but she is incapable of forming a deeper, more emotional bond with them.  Absence appears heavily in this short story as the narrator feels remorseful about her emotional distance and decision to send Emily away for periods of recovery.  They have been absent from each other’s life for potions of Emily’s development.  Emily has known almost nothing but remoteness and displacement.  Emily’s mother sent her to an unaffectionate neighbor for day care when she was eight months old, then to the home of her father’s relatives, then to another caretaker, and finally to a rehabilitation facility.  Every time that Emily returned she was forced to reintegrate into the changing structure of the household.  Emily grew slowly and more detached and emotionally insensitive.  The iron is a symbol of the chores and responsibilities that have prevented the narrator from participating with Emily’s life greatly.  The title of this short story suggests that the narrator is constantly involved in the duties that she must perform to successfully care for her family.  This is very odd because it is these duties that pulled her away from Emily and decreased the quality of her care.  The recurring motion of the iron moving back and forth across the surface of the ironing board represents the narrator’s thought processes as she moves back and forth over her life as a mother, attempting to identify the source of Emily’s current difficulties.  The distance that is felt between the mother and Emily is personified in this simple act of ironing.  Emily’s wellbeing is the central concern of the story but the mother is more actively occupied in ironing Emily’s dress than in the life of the young woman who will wear it.  The final wish for the mother is that Emily will have a strong sense of self-worth and believe that she is more than the dress that is “helpless before the iron.”  The narrator hopes that Emily will be able to rise above the narrator’s mistakes, rather than yield to the circumstances of her birth.  This was a very touching story and it really made me stop and think just how precious life is especially for our own children.  They are only little one time and we should be there for them at all times.                                                  

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on I Stand Here Ironing.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 14 Apr. 2011.

Tillie Olsen - Introduction and Biography

Tillie Lerner Olsen was born in either 1912 or 1913 in Omaha, Nebraska.  Her exact birthdate and year remain unknown because her birth certificate was lost.  Her parents were diplomatic immigrants from Russia.  After the 1905 revolution they fled from Czarist domination.  They were forced to settle for low-wage jobs and a modest life in America.  Tillie was a bright child and she attended Omaha Central High School which is a school that is well-known for academic consistency.  She left school without completing her studies, in order to work various low-wage jobs.  The reason for this decision was partially because of her family’s need and her failure in a class.  She continued to read passionately in public libraries wherever she moved.  During the Great Depression she worked as a tie presser, a meat trimmer, a domestic worker and a waitress.  She began her novel, Yonnondio, at the age of nineteen.  She claimed that the novel focused on the lives of the public and the struggles of labor as a subject for literature.  She married Jack Olsen in 1936.   They had three daughters together as a couple.  She dedicated the majority of the next twenty years of her life to raising her four daughters.  She worked low-wage jobs and participated in political activities.  Olsen was involved in left-wing politics since the age of seventeen.  She was an active member of the Young Communists’ League.  She was detained for her efforts to unionize packinghouse workers.  Her husband, Jack, was also active politically and the couple spent a great deal of time supporting local left-wing politics and participated in unionization movements.  It was not until 1953 that Olsen returned to writing.  Her oldest daughter suggested that Tillie enroll in a writing class at San Francisco State.  She won a Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University for 1955 and 1956.  Her novel, Yonnondio, was written on continuous sheets of paper as well as scrawled pages, envelopes, and discarded trash.  She pieced the novel together and selected the most appropriate fragments and published it in 1974.  Olsen had a remote collection of literary output.  Her influence on other writers, especially women, cannot be over-emphasized.  She was one of the first American writers to make manual labor and the difficulties of everyday people a subject for high tragedy.  She was also one of the First American writers to understand the particular ways in which women’s voices are persecuted by conditions of time, space, and resources.  On January 1, 2007 Olsen died in Oakland, California. 

"Biography of Tillie Olsen | List of Works, Study Guides & Essays | GradeSaver." Study Guides & Essay Editing | GradeSaver. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

Flannery O'Connor - Good Country People

     I enjoyed reading the short story “Good Country People” by Flannery O’Connor.  This short story had a great meaning and it made perfect sense.  This short story was one of Flannery O’Connor’s most successful and frequently anthologized stories.  This short story was published in her first collection of short stories in 1955.  This short story addresses themes of moral versus immoral, the possibility of redemption achieved through an encounter with violence and the foolishness of intellectual self-importance.  The protagonist is Joy and she had changed her name to Hulga because that is the ugliest name she could think of.  She was injured as a child in a hunting accident at the age of ten and she now has a wooden leg which is her most treasured possession because it is a mark of her difference.  She cherishes this because she considers herself more intellectual than all of the “good country people” around her – especially her mother, their neighbors, and Manley Pointer, a Bible salesman.  Manley steals her left leg after seducing her in the loft of a barn.  Joy/Hulga aims to seduce Manley.  In losing her leg, she learns about evil, which challenges her previous belief that “Nothing” is the only meaning in the universe.  This story centers on powerful irony.  In the long run, Joy loses her faith in Nothing, which means that she finally gains knowledge of evil.  The characterization of Mrs. Freeman and her interactions with Mrs. Hopewell are very important.  Mrs. Hopewell believes that the Freemans are “good country people.”  Mrs. Hopewell also believes that Manley must also come from “good country people,” which turns out to be a disgusting misunderstanding.  This elevation of what Mrs. Hopewell considers “good country people” is linked to the theme of disgust with the world in general, which is frequent in many of O’Connor’s stories.  Manley is a liar and a fraud.  Hulga’s missing leg shapes her character.  At first she was uncertain about her wooden leg but now she respects it as her defining quality, besides her education.  She cares for her leg by herself and never lets anyone see it.  This type of approach without any faith in God is symbolized as leading to her failure.  After Manley takes her leg off, she becomes really vulnerable.  Manley steals her wooden leg and leaves her in the loft.  Her education is connected to her lack of faith in God.  In many of O’Connor’s stories the eyes are an important symbol.  In this story the eyes are used to reveal that the people whom Mrs. Hopewell believes to be “good country people” are in fact nothing of the sort.  Manley’s eyes are described brutally as he is sidetracked by Hulga’s disjointed wooden leg.  This story reminds me of the saying that “looks can be deceiving.”  Even though people may seem to be good people inside they are probably not.                                                             

"Flannery O'Connor's Stories Study Guide : Summary and Analysis of "Good Country People" | GradeSaver." Study Guides & Essay Editing | GradeSaver. Web. 18 Apr. 2011.

Flannery O'Connor - Introduction and Biography

     Flannery O’Conner’s writing is filled with meaning and symbolism.  Her writings are hidden in plain sight beneath a unified narrative style that breathes not a word of outline, faith, or personal belief.  Her writing is basically mysterious because it contains knowledge that is hidden to all but those who have been instructed as to how and where to look for it.  She is a Christian writer and her work is message-oriented.  She is far too brilliant of an artist to tip her hand at but like all good writers, ridiculous didacticism is disgusting to her.  She succeeds what few Christina writers have ever achieved – a type of writing that stands up on both literary and religious grounds and succeeds in doing justice to both.  Mary Flannery O’Connor was born in Savannah, Georgia on March 25, 1925.  She was born to Catholic parents Edward F. and Regina C. O’ Connor.  She attended St. Vincent’s Grammar School and Sacred Heart Parochial School.  Her father got a position as an appraiser for the Federal Housing Administration in 1938.  The family moved to North East Atlanta and then to Milledgeville.  Three years later in Milledgeville, Ed died from complications arising from the chronic autoimmune disease lupus.  Flannery attended Georgia State College for Women and State University of Iowa where she received her MFA in 1947.  In 1951, after complaining of a heaviness in her typing arms, she was diagnosed with the same lupus that had killed her father.  Despite the disease she went on to write two novels and thirty-two stories which won awards and praise.  She went on speaking tours when her health permitted. She spent most of her time on the family farm with her mother.  Flannery O’Connor dies from lupus on August 3, 1964 at the age of thirty-nine. Some of her writings seem cold and unemotional, as well as almost meaninglessly blunt and furious.  The majority of her short stories usually end in horrible, freak fatalities or even emotional devastation for the characters.  She remained a sincere Catholic throughout and coupled with the constant awareness of her own impending death.  All of this clarified through an fictional sensibility and gives us valuable insight into just what went into those thirty-two short stories and the two novels.  She had emotional bitterness, a belief in grace as something shocking to the receiver, a cold concept of salvation and a violence as a force for good.  She is considered one of America’s greatest fiction writers and one of the strongest supporter for Roman Catholicism in the 20^th century.    

Galloway, Patrick. "Flannery O'Connor." Books and Blog by Patrick Galloway. 1996. Web. 18

"Flannery O'Connor (1925-1964)." New Georgia Encyclopedia. 3 Mar. 2009. Web. 18 Apr.

James Baldwin - Sonny’s Blues

            I enjoyed reading the short story “Sonny’s Blues” by James Baldwin.  The narrator’s mother asks him to be his brother’s keeper.  After their mother dies, Donny’s life is ruined by prison and drug abuse.  There is so much tension between the two brothers that at one point, Sonny tells his brother to consider him dead from that point on.  The narrator turns his back on his brother and fails to respond to Sonny when he is in prison at first.  At this point he has failed to live up to his mother’s commandment to watch over his brother but this failure is only temporary.  By the end of the story, the narrator takes Sonny back into his home.  He finally takes on the role of his brother’s keeper.  He constantly watched and worried over Sonny as he emerged from the darkness of prison and drug abuse.  Harlem is overwhelmed with drugs, poverty, and frustration.  The narrator was angered by one of Sonny’s old drug-addict friends but in the end he offers the man money.  Sonny’s problems helped the people around him endure and survive by channeling their frustrated desires into his music.  The characters in this poem are trapped physically and emotionally.  Throughout the story, the narrator and Sonny are always struggling to break free from one obstacle or another.  Sonny is physically imprisoned in jail as well as by his addiction to drugs.  The narrator is restricted to Harlem and to the housing projects that he clearly despises.  He is also trapped within himself, unable to express his emotions or live up to his obligations as a brother.  His daughter’s death gave him the motivation that he needed to change.  Sonny is able to express his frustration and rage through being a musician.  He is able to break loose and live as free as any man while he is playing the piano.  The narrator lives his life trapped inside of himself.  He has a hard time communicating with his brother and he even fails to do so because he cannot bear the emotions that come with it.  In the end he is temporarily freed by Sonny, his music offers him a rare glimpse into himself.  Baldwin uses light and darkness in recurrent tension throughout the poem.  He uses them to highlight the warmth, hope, gloom, and despair that mark his character’s lives.  He uses light to describe Sonny’s face when he was young and the warmth that came from sitting in a room full of adults after church.  Light represents all of the positive and hopeful elements of life.  It also symbolizes a form of salvation and grace.  To live in the light is to live a proper, good life.  The darkness constantly threatens the characters in the story.  The darkness represents a list of social and personal problems, which can be found everywhere.  The darkness literally haunts the figures in the story.  They are aware of all the figures once the sun goes down.  Sonny’s life in prison, his addiction to drugs, and the general state of life in Harlem are all personified by the darkness.  The darkness is always balanced against a measure of light.  Light comes to indicate salvation, comfort, and love.  Darkness is the fear and emptiness that always threatens to extinguish the light.                                                        

SparkNotes Editors. “SparkNote on Sonny’s Blues.” SparkNotes.com. SparkNotes LLC. 2007. Web. 13 Apr. 2011.