Nikki Giovanni: A Collector of Memories

Nikki Giovanni is a woman defined by her loves. On my visits to her home, I am always struck by the abundance of beautiful things that she hangs on her walls, puts lovingly on tables and bookshelves, and displays in china closets and breakfronts: the Tiffany lamps made more dear because her sister Gary made replicas of them; the leather bound copies of her books and the first editions of her favorite authors; paintings and sculptures by Charles White, Romare Bearden, Faith Ringgold, Ashley Bryan, Kadir Nelson, Bryan Collier, Ed Dwight; clocks clad in brass, silver, and crystal; her awards, event posters, and broadsides; black memorabilia; metal door-stops fashioned as elephants and hippopotamuses, and lots of photographs of family members and close friends tacked quilt-like on already colorful wallpaper.

Nikki is a collector. But more than collecting things, she collects memories. She has a story for each photograph, for each art object, for each book she pulls off her bookshelves. Not too long ago with her beloved terrier Alex underfoot, she pointed to a copy of Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine by the Darden Sisters on the top shelf of a bookcase that holds her prized cookbooks, and I was surprised that she remembered it was the first book she sent to me after we met in 1987. Then I was still relatively new on the faculty at James Madison University. Nikki was there for a poetry reading. At dinner we talked about Aretha Franklin, Martina Navratilova, Michael Jordon, Star Trek, Norma Jean and Carole Darden’s recipes for strawberry and dandelion wine that they paired with stories about their family. It was easy talking with Nikki, a brilliant intellect with fetching humor. At the close of the evening, Nikki told me that she was going to take a teaching position at Virginia Tech in the fall. Recalling my own difficult adjustment to being on a new faculty in a new state, I promised her that I would bring together a group of women writers to welcome her to Virginia and perhaps provide a network of support as she established herself in Blacksburg.

So in late September 1987, a small group of us—ten in all—ventured up a steep road to a guest house in the Wintergreen Resort, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Paule Marshall, Daryl Dance, Trudier Harris, Sandra Govan, Mary Harper, Opal Moore, Carmen Gillespie and Catherine Rogers met Nikki in a rustic three-story wood-shingled house on Peddler’s Edge. Nikki arrived in a brand new candy-apple red Toyota mr2 sports car. With her son Thomas off to college and her mother living with her sister in California, Nikki was open to what she describes in Shaping Memories: Reflections of African American Women Writers as “that wonderful world of friendship.”

And we had great fun that year: the morning walks in the woods when Paule out-walked all of us to the crest of the mountain, the scare with the black bear that lumbered across our deck, the competitive banter while playing bid whist, the Saturday night reading, the taped interviewing session when I amused myself by acting like Oprah, the tennis games, and the good food and wine that flowed as freely as ideas and opinions around our welcome table. Thus began what has become the Wintergreen Women Writers’ Collective, a gathering of writers who gain strength and direction from communion with one another.

Over the years Nikki and I have shared many experiences that have been stitched into our friendship. Nikki threw herself into the literary life of Virginia Tech and brought such luminaries as Toni Morrison, Gloria Naylor, Val Gray Ward, Daryl Dance, and Edwidge Danticat to campus. My students and I regularly took the two-hour trek from Harrisonburg to Blacksburg to take part in these lectures. And Nikki returned the favor by being a part of all the significant programs of the Furious Flower Poetry Center including the first conference that started it all in September 1994 at James Madison University. I remember the day she stood before an audience of...