In this monologue performed on stage in 1991, American poet, Nikki Giovanni, shows us her associative mind in action, flitting around from current affair to current affair: the shameful way American society treats young Black men, the challenges and struggles of a young rapper called Tupac Shakur (several years before his untimely death), her dream of traveling to space even if only to open a beer and smoke a cigarette - and she’s just getting started. This series of soliloquies leads us everywhere and nowhere, but certain thoughts she expresses may linger in your mind: the fear that she feels for an instant when pulled over by a police officer during a long road trip with a friend - you think you know where the story is going and then she surprises you.
Works by Nikki Giovanni
The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1969 - 1998
Rosa (a short video)
Rosa (a kids biography)
Other Related Books or Materials
Nikki Giovanni: In her Revolutionary Dream (link opens Los Angeles Review of Book article)
About the Host
Novelist Randy Boyagoda is a professor of English at the University of Toronto and principal of St. Michael’s College, where he holds the Basilian Chair in Christianity, Arts, and Letters. He is the author of three novels: Original Prin, Beggar's Feast, and Governor of the Northern Province. His fiction has been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize (2006) and IMPAC Dublin Literary Prize (2012), and named a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice Selection (2012 and 2019) and Globe and Mail Best Book (2018). He contributes essays, reviews, and opinions to publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, First Things, Commonweal, Harper’s, Financial Times (UK), Guardian, New Statesman, Globe and Mail, and National Post, in addition to appearing frequently on CBC Radio. He served as President of PEN Canada from 2015-2017.
Music is by Yuka
From the Archives
Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is the first series associated with the Toronto Public Library’s multi-year digital initiative, From the Archives, which presents curated and digitized audio, video and other content from some of Canada’s biggest cultural institutions and organizations.
Thanks to the Toronto International Festival of Authors (TIFA) for allowing TPL access to their archives to feature some of the best-known writers in the world from moments in the past. Thanks as well to Library and Archives Canada for generously allowing TPL access to these archives.
S1E13: Writers Off the Page
Nikki Giovanni: Road Tripping
OPENING MUSIC SEGMENT (2-3 seconds)
RANDY: Welcome to Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA produced by the Toronto Public Library. I'm Randy Boyagoda. In this episode, poet Nikki Giovanni delivers a monologue that takes us on a joyride.
TEASER: This nation should not be doing what they're doing to Black men, because if we make Black men the enemy, then anything we do to Black men will be alright. And that's just one of the steps from then we've made Black people the enemy and anything we do to Black people is alright. And then pretty soon, of course, and you're watching that already. Anything we do to gay people is alright because after all, they are against Christ. And anything we sort of do to a few Jews every now and then and burning a synagogue. Well, that's alright because after all, they're anti-Christ. And pretty soon, we have a situation that we had in 1939. I don't know when people decide that fascism has to be stopped, but I know that it has to be stopped.
RANDY: I recently read a study that reported the years leading up to and just after 50 are the saddest of all for people. Apparently at this age, which is more or less the down side of midlife, you’re too old in some crucial ways and not old enough in others. Of course, you might argue this could be the case for us from the moment after we’re born to the moment just before we die, but according to scholars of aging, there’s ample evidence that human life, around 50, is the saddest of human lives. Nobody told Nikki Giovanni. In the remarkable monologue you’ll hear in a moment, she glories in life at 51. She has lots to remember and just as much to look forward to, and, always, whether in verse or otherwise, she has lots to talk about. She laments, fiercely, that Sylvia Plath never saw her later years; she remembers her first trip to Canada, twenty-five years earlier, and the trials and tribulations of trying to order fish and chips in a classy Toronto restaurant; she reflects on tennis, being a longtime fan, and goes from there to reflect on tennis celebrities and on crazy, dangerous tennis fans, and she has some advice for all concerned. In passing, she nominates herself to be an astronaut. Don’t get her wrong, she loves the planet Earth, she loves, it, even in spite of the many challenges its denizens confront — and so much of her poetry is about the struggle between love and challenge, with love always in the end winning out — but she’s keen to see what else is out there, beyond our little planet. Now, if there are aliens out there, I am fairly confident that meeting Nikki Giovanni, that listening to Nikki Giovanni, would certainly be more entertaining and maybe more insightful than learning about human beings from a precise and reticent standard issue spaceman reading from remarks prepared by a committee. Who knows, and really, who knows, but perhaps she would tell those aliens, just as she tells us, about a road trip she recently made, with her friend Jenny, from Blacksburg, Virginia, to Princeton, New Jersey. In so doing, she’d reveal a lot to those aliens about human beings’ relationship to time and technology and to each other. Were it not for Giovanni’s jazzed up tone and sparking sense of delight, you — whether alien or otherwise — might get worried when Nikki and her friend Jenny, two Black women lost on the highway, are pulled over by a patrolman. He approaches their vehicle and asks for identification … Giovanni brings you right there, right to a place of tension and possible catastrophe, and then, she goes somewhere else. She sees herself and Jenny as the patrolman sees them, not the category of highway patrolman but the person before her. Taking over his eyes for a moment, she catalogues the mundane items in their car as the source for his reading of them as “two little old ladies” in need of some assistance to get where they’re going. And this appraisal, which many others might find condescending or — being a little past middle age — saddening and even insulting, Giovanni finds amusing, revealing, and a source of wisecracking revelry. That revelry leads right up to the punchy two-word command Nikki Giovanni gives her friend Jenny, before zooming off again.
_________
Nikki Giovanni (NG): Have you noticed that all the good things happen to you after you're dead?
[laughter]
NG: You sit around... That's true, you look at poor Sylvia Plath. If she would've won a Pulitzer while she was alive, she'd probably still be alive, right? And then they wait till 10 years after she's dead, and it's like, "Well, you know we really think her poetry's great." This is not about in my reading, because Gregg told me the clock starts now. [laughter] And he was very specific on things like that. But it does make you... Really it does make you think sometimes, how no matter what it is, that you do... And if some of you write, you really can't count on people. And I'm not against people. I like people, you know. I do life and stuff. But you really can't... [laughter] I do. You really can't count on them, because if you sit around and wait for somebody to say you know that you did good, you'll be dead before they recognize it. [laughter] No, we are very much informed by Sylvia Plath in all fairness and people like that. You can't live your life like that, otherwise you're gonna be unhappy all the time anyway. And if life is too short to drink cheap wine, it's truly too short to be unhappy. That's the truth. Don't you just like unhappy people though, they're such a...
[laughter]
NG: They are. And I haven't been in Toronto since I was I think 19. And I went to school in Nashville, and one summer a friend of mine said, "Let's drive to Canada", and I'm like, "Okay." I try to be adventuresome. I really do work on it, 'cause I'm not basically friendly, and I don't do anything unless I have to.
[laughter]
NG: But we got in the car. She had a Buick, and we got in the car, and we drove from Nashville to Toronto. And then I think I made one of my great international faux pas, because I have no idea now where we were staying. I think there's something called Old Toronto? At least it seemed to me like that's what it would have been called in my mind. [laughter] I don't know, I mean we have Old New York, you have the village-type feeling. But we went to the restaurant there, it was obviously very, very good, and we didn't know one way or the other. And so I'd always been reading, of course, you know about the British. And so you want fish and chips, because you read about fish and chips. No, it always sounds... Nothing on Earth sounds as good as fish and chips with malt vinegar. You're reading and you're just going, "Wow, I really wanna get authentic fish and chips." And so the waiter was like, "Madame, we are not that sort of restaurant."
[laughter]
NG: Okay, another ugly American. But I'm really happy to be back. Toronto is a real pretty city, and I gotta tell you, this is not important. This is truly not important, but I really did cheer for the Jays, both years, and...
[laughter]
NG: I did. I did. Because baseball is an international... I'm a huge sports fan. My good news... I don't know, good news to you or not. My good news though is Lori McNeil, who is a Black woman from Houston, defeated Steffi Graf in the first round. It's the first time in the history of Wimbledon that the number one player and the defending champion has been ousted in the first round, and I'm really glad because something's wrong with either Miss Graf or her fans. I haven't figured out which, and I'm not trying to be nasty, but Mary Pierce beat her at the French Open, if you recall. Miss Pierce got death threats and withdrew from Wimbledon. Oh, she's gone. Sincerely. She had serious death threats and having watched Monica Seles be stabbed in the back, Miss Pierce did a wise thing, she said, "Guess what I think I'll do, I'm going home now." And she and her mother... And I think Steffi Graf's fans are crazy, and I think Steffi needs to address it. Because I think that it's beginning... There's just not that much death in women's tennis, but I'm really happy.
[laughter]
NG: There isn't. And I'm really happy Lori beat her, because first of all you can't be great all by yourself. Let me say this for those of you who are artists, and nothing is as crazy as the profession that I practice. Writers are among the really marginal mental human beings. [laughter] It's true, because we always think we should... Whatever it is, we should have it, you know what I'm saying? You can't be great unless you have great people around you. Everybody would much rather be in a golden age, then be defining themselves by themselves. Did I say that poorly? It's true. And it certainly is true in sports. You cannot ever be a great sportsperson unless you have great opposition.
NG: But it's true in life, you can't be a great person unless you're surrounded by great people, because we either lift each other up or we're all sort of tearing each other down. And we keep watching that, because people keep saying to people who have nothing, "Why can't you elevate?" You can't elevate from a no position. You have to have something upon which to look at. So those of us who are privileged in other words have an obligation to be better people, because we certainly do have a platform from which to spring, instead of looking at other people. I live in a country that's greedy. I live in a country that's myopic. I live in the United States. I live in a country made up of really horrible human beings, if you think about it.
NG: And, no, it's not personal, it's where I live, and that won't change, but it also doesn't mean I have to lie about it. And I live in a nation that is indifferent to the conditions that we have created. I think that's totally unacceptable. I think it's unacceptable that if you would leave what I perceive to be a nice clean city here in Toronto... There're probably problems in Toronto, I don't know about, so I'm not trying to do Canada, and fly right down to New York City. You will see people sleeping in the streets of one of our major areas, but if you go on down to the capital of the United States, you'll see people sleeping in the park across the street from the White House.
NG: I think that's despicable and unacceptable. I think that there is no excuse for the United States of America, which supposedly calls itself a First World nation, to have people sleeping in the streets, to have people that don't know where their next meal is coming from, to have children that don't have health care, to have kids that we scream about wanting them to be born and stuff... And the religious right is crazy in my country, crazy and dangerous. And to have them screaming about you ought to have these children when they won't even give you a decent school to send them to, and yet we've never turned down a bill to build a prison. It costs us 20,000 dollars to keep a man in a cell, we'll spend that money all day long. And we won't spend a penny to keep him out of it. And I think that that's not well. I'm sure that no Canadian in their right mind admires the United States. I just wanted to remind you, there are reasons you shouldn't.
[applause]
NG: We can do better. I've been on book tour since January for my book, Racism 101 and I am gonna read from it. I like 101. Somebody said, "Why did you name it Racism 101?" 'Cause it's basic. Racism is basic. It's the wind in Toronto, it's the rain, it's the cold, it's the heat, whatever it is. It's basic to the world in which I grew up. We are watching something... I'm compelled to mention two things, and I hope I do this without totally boring you. We are watching a process right now that is very, very typical. We're watching the fascistic Los Angeles Police Department decide that OJ Simpson murdered Nicole Simpson, and we have watched him now be condemned, really. We have watched them use the power of the press without giving this boy a chance to defend himself or say anything. The prosecutor was asked "Who else did you look at in this murder?" And she said, "Nobody. We want him." Now she can do better than that. We live in a nation that ha-ha says "You are innocent until proven guilty.", right? That's what the United States Constitution demands. And yet we have taken OJ Simpson... And I'm not gonna say OJ is not a batterer and if you're feminist, I have to say, I don't like batterers. And I don't, but to be a batterer, it's not necessarily to be a murderer. And two people were murdered, and there's a little bit more to this case than that. I hated the way they said he was trying to escape. Nobody in their right mind tries to escape on Highway 5.
[laughter]
NG: No, he was doing what boys in the hood do. He was cruising trying to find something else. I don't know OJ Simpson. I didn't know Nicole. I don't know... I don't live in California. I just know that the Los Angeles Police Department is really noted for hurting people. They're noted for beating people. They're noted for not being able to prosecute clear cases like the Menendez brothers, who admitted they went in that room and shot their parents in cold blood, and they can't get a conviction out of that. But they're gonna get a conviction on OJ Simpson, I don't think so. I really hope not. If he did it, I don't have a problem with that, but I know that they are convicting him as they do Black men in the press. And they've decided already no matter what happens with OJ Simpson, his life is over. He was right about that. He will never go back to being who he was, because of the way that they have reproached him. It's not right. That's all. It's not right. I'm not trying to be persuasive. I don't know any more than what CNN is telling anybody else. I just know the nation, and I know the state in which that child is being... That young man is being convicted, and I know that it's not right because the Los Angeles Police Department is one of the worst things that ever happened on the face of this earth. If you don't believe me, ask Rodney King. That's the truth. That's the truth.
[applause]
NG: I also said I was not gonna go on tour without speaking up for a young man whom you may not know named, Tupac Shakur. He is a rapper. Tupac's mother was a Panther. Tupac is himself, I think, a nice young man. These are not children that I know. He's 22-23 years old. These are not friends of mine. Again, I do know the nation in which I live. I do know that no young Black man shoots a policeman in Atlanta, Georgia, and walks away from it. They have accused Tupac of shooting a cop. They have accused him of sexual abuse of a woman, and if that won't work, they now accused him of beating up a friend of his. I'm tired of it, because when you hear that Black men are being picked on, you say to yourself, "Why are they always whining?" They're always whining because somebody's always picking on them. It's not right. I can't explain Tupac to most of you because most of you are too young to even have... Too old to listen to rap. I don't and you probably shouldn't. It is not our music. No, it's not our music, you know what I'm saying.
[laughter]
NG: We don't know what they're saying, can't understand it and shouldn't have to care. And that's the truth. But they also shouldn't be hounding these young men, they should not... This nation should not be doing what they're doing to Black men, because if we make Black men the enemy, then anything we do to Black men will be alright. And that's just one of the steps from then we've made Black people the enemy and anything we do to Black people is alright. And then pretty soon, of course, and you're watching that already. Anything we do to gay people is alright because after all, they are against Christ. And anything we sort of do to a few Jews every now and then and burning a synagogue. Well, that's alright because after all, they're anti-Christ. And pretty soon, we have a situation that we had in 1939. I don't know when people decide that fascism has to be stopped, but I know that it has to be stopped. And I know that the nation in which I live is well on its way to a fascistic situation. We are most willing in the United States to kill people we don't like. We have been doing it for years... Since before The Mayflower. We have been doing it. It is a dangerous thing. You can't do anything about it. I'm not asking you to.
NG: You got your own problems here in Canada. But I do know that I could not come any place and not say it's something that we need to be aware of. We deserve better on planet Earth. It's a little teeny tiny planet in what we know to be a finite universe. I happen to like planet Earth, I recommend it. I think it's a nice place to visit. I do. I'm a space freak. And if any of you read any of my books at all, you see a lot of it, but especially in 101. I am a space freak. I would love to go into space. I'm 51 years old. And it's not like I've done everything on Earth, because I haven't. It's just that I would really like to see space. I would... I think we need a president or something that's gotten off of this planet to recognize... [laughter] No, because we get so many little minds going... You know, Hillary is an inside trader and deserves to probably be indicted.
[laughter]
NG: She does. Whitewater is serious? There's a lot of money involved. They trying to make it like, "Oh, pooh, you all are just... " No, all of these are serious things. We need somebody though who has another view of what it is to be alive. Me, I know we need a Black woman in space. I was really happy to see Mae Jemison. I think it was good that Mae went. Mae has finally resigned because she knew she wasn't going back again. I think they need to send somebody who's normal. Me, I'm normal.
[laughter]
NG: I do. I think we need to send somebody who is open to new life forms. Definitely Black people, Black women have accepted everything on Earth so I know I'm available for that. I said to Mae... Because my mother drinks beer and I would never do anything like go into space without taking a beer for my mother. She drinks Miller's Genuine Draft. And so I would definitely take a bottle of beer for my mother, and of course I smoke. So I would definitely light a cigarette. I said to Mae, "Well, what would happen if I do a space shuttle and light a cigarette?"
NG: And Jemison is a very nice human being. She says, "Well you know, Nikki, your fellow shuttle workers won't like it." And I said, "Well, lot of people don't like things, Mae." What is... 'Cause you can't go on that. "So what are the odds that I would blow us up?" She said, "Oh about 50-50." That's pretty good odds there. I said, "Mae, if I go, I'm lighting a cigarette. 50/50 is a good chance. Why wouldn't I light a cigarette? Why would I go into space and be something I'm not on Earth?" I would have to light a cigarette and I would have to open a beer for my mother. Now they tell me that there's no sound in space. They say that it's a vacuum and sound doesn't carry. I can't believe that, I can't believe that if I popped a beer for my mother, it wouldn't go...
[vocalization]
NG: Into the entire universe and something would come to the window and look in, "What's that you've got?" "I've got a beer. Would you like one?" Because we keep saying, "We go into space. We haven't seen any life forms." What did we offer these people?
[laughter]
NG: No, we gotta do better. I think it would be a wonderful thing. I really do. I think it would be great. In all fairness to everything, somebody... I was just standing outside talking to somebody and they said, "Well, Nikki Giovanni must be getting on." And I said, "Yeah, I think she is. She's in her 50s." Actually I'm 51. I recommend it. I don't know. I feared I do. I think it's so great. There's nothing wrong with being in your 20s or something like that, but everybody knows 20s are a really pissy period and the only reason 20s are acceptable is that the teen years are even worse.
[laughter]
NG: And you know that. All of that stuff about high school. It's all a lie. Nobody had a good high school experience. I don't believe people that say that. And then you get these letters now, "Come back for your 20th anniversary." Are you kidding? I just liked you all when I had to be bothered with you. You think I'm deliberately... No, things like that are crazy. I think it's probably fair to say that at least in my experience in being what I'm gonna call for the purpose of this, grown, is just like you wake up and you're grown. I had a son when I was... I was 26 when I had Thomas. When I was 26, I was living on my own. I was living in New York City. I had a decent apartment and everything. And it wasn't about any of that. It wasn't about the bills coming to me or anything like that.
NG: It was just like, one morning I woke up, I was having coffee and a cigarette and it was like a breeze went through the house. It was like, "whoosh, you're grown." And I just said, "I'm grown". I can't... Some of you have been grown, or are grown. And you know how you just woke up one morning and said, "I'm grown." And you accept it. It isn't anything that happened. It's just that you know. Whatever the Rubicon is, I have crossed it. I am grown. But I don't think growing old is the same thing. I think that even though you look in the mirror every day and you brush your teeth... And me, I look in the mirror, brush your teeth, comb your hair. But then you notice the light. And you think, "Wow, the light in the bathroom is really strange. It really plays on my hair."
[laughter]
NG: And you never think, "Well, that's grey hair, stupid". You don't. And you're looking in the mirror but you don't see the wrinkles, and you don't see the moles. You don't see any of that. You see yourself as you are. And then you notice other people are doing things around you and you begin to think, "How nice". You get on a bus or subway in New York and people move over, "Would you like a seat ma'am?" And you say, "Wow, the kids are so polite. Why are they complaining about the kids? They're always so nice." And you're never thinking you're a little old lady and they are doing something for you. I think other people have to bring you the fact that you're old. And you have to finally hear it because you never see yourself the way other people do.
NG: I wrote an essay for Du Bois or about Du Bois called, "Black is the noun." And I thought in all fairness to Dr. Du Bois, I should establish that I'm grown. And in doing that, I realized that I couldn't establish that I was grown. I should establish that I'm, in fact, old. I open my... Because, for those of you, this is the 50th anniversary of “The Souls of Black Folks”. For those of you who have read "The Souls of Black Folks", Du Bois opened up with the spirituals. Each one of his chapters had a spiritual line that he was using. So I thought, to honor Du Bois, I should in fact start with my music which is gonna be, of course, the blues. It starts with the blues and it ends up with Aretha Franklin going into rock and roll.
NG: There's an old Kansas City blues man called Jay McShann, and he wrote a song called 'Going Down Slow', which is a terrifically wonderful song. He said, "Well, I've had my fun if I don't get well anymore." I knew I was old when one evening last spring, I was driving from Blacksburg to Princeton to attend a party. I had finished early but a friend was driving with me and she couldn't get off from work. We left about 5:30 in the evening driving my car, a candy apple red MR2. We had on our normal driving garb, jeans and T-shirt. I'm always cold. So I had on a sweatshirt. We were short coiffured, medium nailed, no makeup, modern sort of women, on a fun drive to a fun place. We stopped for coffee, smoked, munched the sandwiches we had made. Were, in other words, going on about our business.
NG: Now Jenny has two talents, that I not only do not possess, but do not aspire to. She can spell and she can read a map. My idea of getting around is to go to the farthest point and make the appropriate 90 degree turn. For example, in order to reach Princeton, New Jersey, from Blacksburg, Virginia, I would go to Washington DC and turn left. [laughter] But Jenny can read a map. So she angled us on to the Pennsylvania Turnpike, around Philadelphia and into the New Jersey Turnpike. I don't like to be picky about things because I lack certain skills myself. But I do think it's not asking too much for employees to know where things are located. You go into, say, Kroger's looking for tomato puree. You would expect to find that with canned vegetables only it isn't. It's located with sauces. You ask someone wearing a Kroger's shirt and you expect to get that answer. You expect Turnpike officials who take your money at toll booths to know which exit to take for something as well-known as Princeton.
NG: I have an aunt. Well, actually I have two aunts, but I only wanna talk about one of them. My aunt, and I will not designate which, has trouble with her night vision. She's not quite as blind as a bat, but she has trouble. And there are possibly these genetic transfers. I don't think I've reached that stage yet, but sometimes it's difficult to see exactly what the signs are saying. It had gotten quite dark. We had stopped for coffee several times, and I as driver was happy to be on a turnpike with large green signs. When we were handed off from the Pennsylvania to the New Jersey, I asked the woman in the booth, which exit I should take for Princeton. And had she just said, "Honey, I ain't got no idea where no Princeton is. It's been a long day and nothing has gone right. My left foot is hurting 'cause of that corn. I cut that corn but it's not healing right. And maybe I have diabetes. When a corn won't heal, that's a sign of diabetes. My mother...
[laughter]
NG: My mother had sugar and she lost her whole leg right up to her knee.
[laughter]
NG: Or something like that. I would have been understanding.
[laughter]
NG: "Yes" I would have said, "I've heard that corns that won't heal are sign of sugar." My mother's best friend Anne Taylor from over in Knoxville, was just telling me about it when I was passing through last June, and she and I could have visited a bit while Jenny looked at the map and plotted our course. But no, she says with authority, "Take exit 19." And we set out with the confidence of the innocently assured. We were lost immediately. There was nothing that made sense on that exit. It was 3:30 in the morning and worst of all, I began to despair. We turned the light on in the car so that Jenny could see the map but golly, those lines are very, very small. And the car was in motion and bingo, the blue lights were shining in the back of me. I pulled over, popped (unintelligible) tape out of the cassette, ground out my cigarette, grabbed my seat belt, and waited for the highway patrolmen. "Your registration and license please."
NG: I had the registration with me, with my gas card in the front, but my driver's license was in my purse in the trunk. I looked up to explain my problem when he turned his flashlight into the car. He saw two McDonald's coffees, an ashtray full of cigarettes and us, two lost, tired old ladies. "Where are you coming from?", he asked. "Roanoke, Virginia." I always answer Roanoke because nobody knows where Blacksburg is. "How long have you been on the road?". "Since about 5:30. We're lost. We're trying to get to Princeton." Well, he explained, "You're way out of your way, you've got another 50 miles to go." And he gave us directions and said, "Drive carefully." "I'll get my driver's license now," I offer. "Oh no, ma'am, you all just get where you're going. Have a safe evening." Something in me clicked. A few years ago, he would have given me a ticket. A few years ago, whether I was lost or not, I would have been written up, but we were just two little old ladies and what he probably thought was my son's car in the middle of the night, trying to get to Princeton. I turned to Jenny, "We are old."
[laughter]
NG: "He saw old women. You drive."
[applause]
_____________
RANDY: Yolande Cornelia Giovanni was born in 1943, in Knoxville Tennessee, to parents who were both teachers. Her sister started calling her Nikki, at a young age, and the name stuck as her family moved around America. She graduated in 1967 from Fisk University and moved to New York a year later, and began publishing poetry that established her as a major voice in the Black Arts movement. For decades, while teaching at universities including Rutgers and Virginia Tech, her work has enjoyed popular success, critical acclaim, academic attention, and literary-cultural accolades, including nominations for the National Book Award, an Emmy Award, and a Grammy Award. She has also been honoured by the NAACP seven times and received the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award and the Langston Hughes Award for Outstanding Poetry.
Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA is a year-long podcast series that celebrates 40 years of the Toronto International Festival of Authors. It's produced by the Toronto Public Library. The Executive Producer is Gregory McCormick. This episode was produced by Gregory McCormick and me, Randy Boyagoda, with technical support from George Panayotou and Michelle De Marco, and marketing support from Tanya Oleksuik, and research support from Marcella van Run.
For more about Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA, visit writersoffthepage.ca, where you will find links to the books mentioned in each episode, and links to other relevant materials in the TPL’s collections. For all of Toronto Public Library’s podcast series, check out tpl.ca/podcasts.
Music is by YUKA.
I'm Randy Boyagoda and we'll be back soon with another episode of Writers Off the Page: 40 Years of TIFA.