Nikki giovanni brief biography of mozart

"Childhood remembrances are always a drag/if you're Black," Nikki Giovanni writes in her poem "Nikki-Rosa." "If you become famous or something/they never talk about how happy you were to have/your mother/all to yourself and/how good the water felt when you got your bath..." Though she grew up mostly middle class, Giovanni remembers poverty and her father's alcoholism.

She uses the poem, however, to renounce biographies that only focus on those parts of her life. She writes that it isn't the bad things that make any difference, "but only that everybody is together and you/and your sister have happy birthdays and very good/Christmasses."

Nikki Giovanni was born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni on June 7, 1943, the second child of Yolande and Jones Giovanni.

A few months after her birth, the family left their Knoxville, Tennessee home to move to Cincinnati, Ohio. Giovanni didn't write much as a child, but like many, she spent time doing chores to earn money. "I earned my allowance by washin