The word family brings to mind a group of people, blood or non-blood, who will always be supportive, and love unconditionally. That is why the most important word in Nikki Giovanni’s poem “Nikki Rosa” is “family”, even though it is found halfway through the poem. Ms. Giovanni uses the poem to talk about a fictional character, whom embodies herself and Rosa Parks, and how when the autobiographers talk about her background it is always about the negative aspects of poverty, and not the positive aspects of having a loving family.
Nikki Giovanni starts the poem off talking in a sarcastic way about how “Childhood remembrances are always a drag If your Black,” to show the reader how people will remember a person’s childhood as being horrible, just because of the color of a person’s skin. She then continues on about undesirables like having an outside toilet, or living in the hood, but then directly correlates that with the positivity of her family. She writes, “If you become famous… they never talk about how happy you were to have your mother all to yourself.” At this point in the poem, Ms. Giovanni wants the readers to understand that her viewpoint, and the viewpoints of autobiographers, on a single parent household, are complete opposite. Autobiographers’ view having an uninvolved parent as a harmful impact that can affect a child’s life. On the other hand, Ms. Giovanni sees the good that can come from forming a deep, and personal bond with the involved parent. She then continues on with the theme of family, by talking about her father.
Nikki Giovanni shows how important the character’s father is to the family dynamics. She writes about how the “Father’s pain as he sells his stock and another dream goes,” and shows that when she looks back on her childhood she sees the sacrifices and lost opportunities that the father had to withstand, not the opportunities that