The Houston Public Library (HPL) is honored to present Nikki Giovanni as part of its Houston Public Library Quarterly (HPLQ) Author Series and the celebration for African American History Month. Giovanni will present her latest book, A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter on Thursday, February 15, 2018 at 7:30 PM in the Cullen Performance Hall on University of Houston Central Campus – 4300 University Drive, 77204.
For over thirty years Nikki Giovanni has held a unique place on the American stage. A poet, activist, and educator, her fiery, humorous and reflective voice has informed our national consciousness; while her gifts of spirit as healer, sage, and comforting friend have charmed our hearts.
Her 2013 collection Chasing Utopia was a literal hybrid of sentiment, which found the poet reflecting on everything from the sensual pleasures of food to the legacy of President Lincoln, and the future of the nation. With A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, Giovanni returns with what may be her most intimate collection. She reveals the joy and peril of aging, and pays tribute to the poets, thinkers and students that hold court inside her mind and heart including her good friend Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared before Angelou’s death in 2014.
Nikki Giovanni has been an activist and integral figure of the Black Arts Movement of the early 1970s. She re-established the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a defining institution of the Civil Rights era, at Fisk University in 1965. Cherished and revered by younger generations, in 2016 she appeared as a special guest of the Afro Punk Festival and has become an icon of the hip-hop community for her early poetic recordings. In A GOOD CRY Nikki Giovanni demonstrates that she is as energetic and relevant as ever, with a deeply personal and moving collection of poems.
Thursday, February 15, 2018 | 7:30 PM
Cullen Performance Hall on University of Houston Central Campus
4300 University Boulevard, 77204
Guests are able to purchase A GOOD CRY: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter on-site from Brazos Bookstore.
Need more information? Visit www.houstonlibrary.org/hplq to learn more event details.
For further information, visit the Houston Public Library at www.houstonlibrary.org, on Twitter @houstonlibrary, on Facebook – houstonlibrary or call 832-393-1313.