In a career spanning over thirty years, Nikki Giovanni has created a body of work that's become vital and essential to our American consciousness. Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea is an extraordinarily intimate collection, a masterpiece that explores the ecstatic union between self and community.
Each poem bears the revered cultural icon's trademark of the unfalteringly political and the intensely personal: The elegant "What We Miss" exalts the might and grace of women, while "Swinging on a Rainbow" rejoices about the spaces in which we read; Giovanni commemorates Africa and her family legacy in the majestic "Symphony of the Sphinx" and contemplates America in the heartbreaking "Desperate Acts" and "9:11:01 He Blew It." And in the dreamy "Making James Baldwin" and dazzling "Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea," Giovanni gives readers reason to comfort, to share, to love, to change, and to be human.