Nikki-Rosa

Nikki-Rosa

CC: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/177827

Giovanni writes as the speaker to provide a description of herself as the Nikki-Rosa. Nikki-Rosa expresses the fundamentals and the essence of a black childhood. Giovanni opens the poem with, “childhood remembrances are always a drag”. She opens the poem with her observation of her childhood and suggests that the childhood of a Black child is a struggle and encumbrance to succeed and to be happy. Giovanni says this to express her childhood and growing up in the 1960s. During the 1960s, the Civil Rights Movement occurred with the Jim Crow Laws that expresses the ideology of ‘separate but equal’. This meant that the blacks were treated unequal to the whites and were hindered from receiving an education, freedom, equal income and jobs. Giovanni uses the motif of emotion to highlight her perception of growing up. Through the majority of the poem, Nikki-Rosa, Giovanni uses imagery to reflect the empathy of pain, memories of happiness and the impact of being Black. She presents that even though being Black means having a childhood full of encumbrance, being poor didn’t concern Giovanni, happiness did. Giovanni presents the analogy of “Black love is Black wealth”. This means that black love equates to the true meaning of wealth of love and not money and materialism. In one case, Giovanni presents the holiday of Christmas that actually brought her family together and happy. Even though the family lacked resources, they were still happy together. The importance of this poem is even though her family struggled and lacked resources; they fought for liberation and conserved their happiness. Nikki-Rosa was the roots of Giovanni of where she came from and even though she had a hard childhood, the most important aspect of her life was to be happy.