A writer cannot be told what to write. The artist is free do what he has to do. In this end of the year podcast, Michael Bowen and Wink Twyman close out the year with an honest and moving review of Nikki Giovanni (1943-2024). A Native of Knoxville, Tennessee, Giovanni wrote moving poetry about the meaning of Blackness in America. Poems such as Nikka-Rosa struck a chord with Black Americans in the 1970s. Bowen and Twyman come from different places as they grapple with the poetic genius of an Afro-haired militant from a small town in the Tennessee mountains. Does Giovanni get to tell Bowen's story? Twyman's story? Does one have to be black to tell our life story? Bowen opens up about his displeasure with the story told of South Central Los Angeles in Boyz in the Hood. Director and Producer John Singleton got it wrong. Twyman questions why we remember the story of our lives through Giovanni and not other black natives of Knoxville like Twyman's Great Aunt Daisy Kincaid Brown. The episode lays bares our complicated remembrance of the poet Giovanni. A centerpiece of the episode is a stirring conversation for the ages between a young Nikki Giovanni and a wise elder James Baldwin. See the link below.

"and I really hope no white people has cause to write about me because they never understand Black love is Black wealth and they'll probably talk about my hard childhood and never understand that all the while I was quite happy" -- Nikki Giovanni in Nikki-Rosa

Show notes:

• Nikki Giovanni and James Baldwin Conversation
• Nikki-Rosa by Nikki Giovanni