Editor’s Note: While our usual editorial style uses poets’ last names on second reference, this essay intentionally breaks with that style as a nod to the intimacy the poet has cultivated with audiences and readers.

By Kendra N. Bryant, PhD

I turned myself into myself and was
jesus
men intone my loving name
All praises All praises
I am the one who would save
 —Nikki Giovanni, “Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why)” 

Jesus wept. (John 11:35)

I find Jesus and Nikki to be quite similar, maybe even one and the same. Admittedly, however, I don’t know either that well. But I think I know enuf about them to make such an assertion. See, I’m thinking if Jesus really is on Mars,[1] then Nikki’s fascination with space is really her fascination with herself, but not in an ego-tripping, self-centered fashion; more like a return to Self. Otherwise, why else in her 1971 essay, “Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet” — which begins with her own Creation story about a possibly bored Earth who was one with the sun before it, like Mercury and Mars, flew away from the sun (with Venus in tow) — did Nikki write she is “a being from almost another planet” (133, 136)? Maybe she is.

Maybe Nikki is from Mars, and when she turned herself into herself and was Jesus, her body was transported to Earth.

Or: Maybe Nikki is so enthralled with space travel because her identical twin, they both born from one fertilized egg split in two, lives on Mars with Jesus. After all, Nikki is a Gemini. Maybe Nikki’s identical twin communicates with Nikki in her dreams, which is how Nikki knows “[w]hen the man in the moon smiles, [t]he men on Mars dance,”[2] unless Mae Jemison told her so[3]. And maybe it was Nikki’s twin who told her to name her son Thomas, the apostle called “twin.” He, one of Jesus’ 12 disciples, was willing to die with Jesus as He journeyed back to Judea, where Jews attempted to stone him, to see the deceased Lazarus (John 11:16). Perhaps Jesus wanted to make sure Nikki had her own “ride or die.”

If Nikki’s twin, who lives on Mars with Jesus, is talking to Nikki in her dreams, then that would also explain why Nikki Giovanni is a writer who believes “a Black beautiful, loving world is possible” (“Gemini” 149). After all, Nikki has spent her life propagating “Black love is Black wealth”[4] thru works that lionize Black feeling, Black talk[5] — writin bout how Black folks cook, quilt, pray, sing, sex, dance, protest — how they “remained humane under inhumane conditions.”[6] And still do.  

I’m thinking: Jesus, who I know was a nappy headed Negro, gave Black folks Nikki cause He knew she would rightly manifest Him (and His Black love) here on Earth — not quite like Martin Luther King, Jr. “I Have a Dream”–“I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” Jesus manifestation, but like Nikki Giovanni Re: Creation–Black Judgement–Chasing Utopia manifestation. That’s why John, who was a witness for Jesus, begins his book with “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). You get it?

Nikki told us she became a writer because she had no other skills she did as well (“Gemini” 135), and that’s clearly because Jesus made sure her writerly self was here on Earth: to right (or write) the truth. And although Jesus gave Nikki what would feel to most of us an unsurmountable task, I believe she was born for it, for as a little girl she daydreamed about “hold[ing] the whole world up if I so chose,” she says, (138) and then explains with “power comes responsibility,” which Nikki recalls her grandmother taught her, was to her people (138).

Undoubtedly, her people are Black women Nikki describes as “the single group in the West intact … the only group that derives its identity from itself” (144) — which is why, when Nikki turns herself into herself, she is Jesus. Her people are Black women, she says; they are the “for and to”[7]— the ones who will be “quilting a black-eyed pea”[8] when Black America lands on Mars, and Nikki knows this because her twin is already there with Jesus. And together, at midnight, over a glass of red wine, they commune with Nikki, which colors her dreams — although she thinks her dreams are colored by her “morning breakfast routines.”[9]

Either way, it is quite likely since Nikki Giovanni doesn’t have a biological twin (she knows of) and human life forms have yet to be discovered on Mars, that Nikki carries a two-ness. But it ain’t the Du Boisian double consciousness that too many Black folks have accepted. Nikki ain’t been engaged in “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” (Du Bois 9). For she confesses in an “I am” approach:

I really hope no white person ever has cause
to write about me
because they never understand
Black love is Black wealth and they’ll
probably talk about my hard childhood
and never understand that
all the while I was quite happy.
(“Nikki-Rosa,” 53; lines 27-33)

Nikki’s twoness, instead, is like an incomprehensible spirit frolicking in a body that operates in a manner inviting people to receive her words, her message. But Nikki is more than “we are spirits having a human experience.”[10] Because her embodiment surpasses our understanding — at least my own — Nikki is alien. Yet! because she is so hueman, she is also a friend.

While I, like most little Black girls, consumed and regurgitated Nikki’s 1972 “Ego Tripping” poem — and even claimed her sixth stanza re: her “recreation” my favorite — I began musing over Nikki’s Jesus self after reading her latest collection: A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter (William Morrow, 2017). During her lectures at Furious Flower’s 2019 Legacy Seminar, which I attended, Nikki shared she was learning to cry, thus the impetus of the 54 poems and 111 pages that make up her compilation: “I am trying to learn / How to cry,” Nikki writes in her poem, “Baby West” (6; stanza 14 ). “It’s not that my life / Has been a lie / But that I repressed / My tears” (6; stanza 15).

I listened to Nikki talk about how she rarely cried, how she couldn’t cry, but as of late she cries at the drop of a hat, and I thought of Jesus. I thought of the Jesus, who, like Nikki, was at the frontlines of revolutionary wars, if you will. About how they —  witnessing famine, genocide, and capitalism, losing loved ones, and being rejected — still said yes; still gave love; and still offered the gospel as they stood in their is-ness, in that “I am” spirit. And I thought: Of all the shit Jesus witnessed and endured, why did Lazarus’ death make him cry? What made Nikki want to learn to cry?

According to Biblical scripture, after seeing the sadness Lazarus’ friends and his sisters, Mary and Martha, carried, Jesus “groaned in the spirit and was troubled” (John 11:33). And when Jesus looked upon Lazarus’ dead body, “Jesus wept” (John 11:35). Jesus eventually resurrects Lazarus, which he might’ve done because He wanted to prove to onlookers He is the resurrection and the life, which He proclaims to Martha in verse 25. Or Jesus so loved Lazarus, as the Jews observe in verse 36, that He could not bear Lazarus’ death. So Jesus told Lazarus to get up. I’m no Biblical scholar, but I think any way the wind blows, Jesus’ weeping humanizes Him, while His ability to resurrect Lazarus speaks to an incomprehensible divinity. Moreover, the letting go, as expressed in Jesus’ tears, conjured life.

Jesus basically surrendered to His feelings, and I think Nikki Giovanni is experiencing a similar phenomenon. In her effort to cry, Nikki purposely engages that human expression that personifies her, and I wonder: What divine thing will she bring forth? What or whom will she resurrect?

In A Good Cry, Nikki writes to her family, friends, and Virginia Tech students. She writes about food, nature, and Black lives mattering, while remembering Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, Ruby Dee, and Rita Dove. Nikki acknowledges schools, movements, and museums; she imagines Black women singing in Mars, she shakes with Big Maybelle in a Newport nightclub, and she makes clear the difference between school and education. Nikki says she wants to be a fly on the wall (as well as a possum in autumn). She takes her water with sugar and fruit juices, and as a little girl, she loved to dust the bathroom lightbulbs. Clearly, A Good Cry is a myriad of personal experiences and relationships —much like a creative nonfiction memoir that, although points to the author’s life, also points readers to their own lives.

I don’t understand all of the poems in A Good Cry, specifically not “Poseidon Hears His Baby Boy Crying,” and I am fine with not understanding it. I don’t particularly analyze poetry; for poetry shouldn’t be as much analyzed as it should be felt. And so I’ve been feeling my way through A Good Cry wanting to happen upon the Jesus piece — the one specific poem that further supports my notions re: Nikki’s relationship with Jesus, particularly their emotionality. (Because I really do want to connect “Jesus wept” and A Good Cry.)

At first reading, I was almost sure “Space: Our Frontier” was it. I’ve been so amused with Jesus being on Mars with Nikki’s twin sister, this poem felt like the Word. In it, Nikki urges NASA to send Appalachian Hill writing students to Antarctica to observe its climate because Antarctica is “the closest thing we have to Space” (10). Especially because the poem’s first line mentions the Middle Passage — which nods to her 2002 “Quilting the Black Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars)” — and then speaks about endeavoring to Antarctica, “in friendship,” to uncover the life forms that the “quiet side” of the sun warms (9), I initially believed “Space: Our Frontier” was the Jesus piece. I mean, how can one not feel Jesus in Nikki’s expressions, which include lines like: “our dreams [being] the perfect beginning” (11)? But as convincing as “Space: Our Frontier” is, that poem is not it. The it poem signaling Nikki’s Jesus self is “I Married My Mother.”

Almost centering the book, “I Married My Mother” is compiled of 45 lines, the longest being eight words. It is the Jesus piece that signals the resurrection of both Nikki Giovanni and her mother; their relationship is the impetus for Nikki’s other relationships, most of which are shared via Nikki’s lectures, poems, and prose pieces. “I Married My Mother” is Nikki’s declared return to self, or her acceptance of her ultimate self, wherein Nikki finds safety (again) in a “mother-love” [11] made possible through her own communal practices. In other words, just like Jesus’ purpose was made clear in how He communed with the disinherited, Nikki’s purpose is defined through her community relationships.

Understanding the depth of this poem is best done, I think, in consideration of Howard Thurman’s[12] philosophies about one’s purpose, which is thoughtfully explicated in Luther E. Smith’s 1988 “Intimate Mystery: Howard Thurman’s Search for Ultimate Meaning.” Smith’s essay is organized into three sections, and part 1, “Reality’s Narrative,” explains Thurman’s ideas about ultimate reality as it exists in community, God, and love. Although Smith’s entire essay is worth discussing here, I will focus on “Reality’s Narrative,” which does the most to support my notion re: Nikki’s “I Married My Mother” being a Christlike expression.

Part 1 of Smith’s essay includes two sections: “Community and God” and “The Love-ethic.” These sections collectively explain Thurman’s theory that ultimate meaning, in other words, one’s purpose in life, is informed by one’s relationship to one’s community, which results in one’s relationship to God, and concludes with one manifesting that relationship to God by relationshipping with others. To understand “I Married My Mother” in terms of Thurman’s “Search for Ultimate Meaning” requires folks to know a little bit about Nikki’s childhood experiences and the relationship she had with her mother and other beings, sentient and non-sentient. (I suggest reading The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow, 2003), which includes “Gemini,” “Sacred Cows and Other Edibles,” and “Racism 101”).

Nonetheless, to understand “I Married My Mother,” readers should know this: Nikki Giovanni was born in 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee; however, she spent her elementary and middle school years in Cincinnati, OH, until she entered ninth grade, at which time she moved back to Knoxville where she completed her high school years under her maternal grandparents’ guardianship. Nikki’s father was abusive, and at 15 years old, she no longer wanted to bear witness to her father’s abuse. According to Virginia Fowler’s “Chronology” reprinted in The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968–1998 (William Morrow, 2003),  Nikki’s grandmother, “who is involved in numerous charitable and political endeavors, becomes an increasing influence on her, teaching her the importance of helping others and fighting injustice” (xxi). Nikki was also influenced by two of her high school teachers, says Fowler (xxi) — all of whom inarguably facilitate Nikki’s affinity for little old ladies.

In between writing and publishing poetry, receiving awards, and participating in lectures, Nikki also became her parents’ caretaker, purchasing a house her abusive father had to live in, thus removing him as head of household and, therefore, as the dominant force of her mother’s abuse. While Nikki’s relationship with her parents (and her sister who was two years her elder) coupled with the relationships she encountered as a Black woman navigating white America’s supremacist, capitalist patriarchy, are common tropes in Nikki’s poetic works, “I Married My Mother” focuses on Nikki’s relationship with her mother, which is actually an interrogation of herself. According to Howard Thurman, says Smith, “At the most fundamental level of physical survival we can see that each form of life depends upon an other-than-self source for nourishment. Existence requires relatedness” [emphasis mine] (85). As such, in “I Married My Mother,” Nikki describes her relationship with her mother through her relationship with crying — and both, mother-love and crying, are sources of nourishment vital to human survival.

Nikki’s poem begins with her claiming crying is a skill she “maybe” will learn; however, she “automatically” wipes tears from her face, thus implying crying, the process of shedding tears, is not a skill — for crying is the eye’s natural response to removing irritants, reducing stress hormones, and fighting pathogenic microbes — but the when of crying is the skill Nikki hopes to learn. In other words, crying as an expression of one’s vulnerability is the skill Nikki says she “maybe” will learn, noting both her mother and sister did learn to cry. They dared to be vulnerable:

I know crying
Is a skill
I automatically wipe
My eyes even though I know
Crying
Is a skill

Maybe I will learn                       
My mother did
When she thought
I was asleep

Following Nikki’s admission (which is her being vulnerable) Nikki invites her sister Gary into her musings. “I think my sister did / Sleep / But sleep is as difficult / To me as crying” (lines 11-14). Gary not only knew how to cry, but unlike Nikki, she was also able to sleep. This departure from her relationship with her mother is significant to understanding Nikki Giovanni’s whole at-home community, for Nikki’s sister seemed to have it all, as Nikki notes in her autobiographical essays and shares in her lectures. Nikki grew up literally under Gary, often admiring her and “bending” to her will, while loving her fiercely.

Nikki then goes on to write: “I laugh easily / And I smile / And withhold any true / Feelings” (lines 15-18). Basically, Nikki laughs to keep from crying, which is a common mode of survival within Black communities. According to Smith: “Thurman writes that ‘at the core of life is a hard purposefulness, a determination to live.’ This purposefulness is not a drive that occurs in isolation,” writes Smith, “for each expression of life is dependent upon other forms of life for the achievement of its potential” [author’s emphasis] (85). Although withholding one’s true feelings is a pretense that may invite unauthentic relationships,  laughing and holding back one’s true feelings are absolutely an expression of one’s “determination to live,” for falling apart — feeling — is a luxury, I think, many Black people (mothers, activists, teachers) cannot afford, for they may not be able to put themselves back together again. I think in the same way Nikki felt she was not afforded the luxury of feeling, neither did Jesus, which is why He did not “fall apart” until the latter part of his life. But to Thurman’s first point, Nikki’s determination to live was dependent upon her relatedness with others such as her mother, her sister, as well as her teacher and father, both of whom Nikki addresses next in her poem.

In the 11 lines following Nikki’s claiming to “withhold any true feelings,” she writes:

Except once I fell in love
With my eighth grade teacher
And spent most of my life trying
To feel safe
Again
Though maybe
I’m safe
Now
After almost thirty years
Which is as long
As I lived with my mother

These lines direct readers to the “mother-love” relationships Nikki found in her teachers, although she speaks of only one here. Nevertheless, in her “mother-love” relationships with teachers, Nikki fulfills Thurman’s second point re: “reality is community” (85). According to Thurman, says Smith, “Reality is community because all creation works together for the completion of the telos of life itself” (85). Nikki’s will to “fall in love” is her conscious intent of being whole, as implied in the lines: “And spent most of my life trying / To feel safe / Again” (ll. 21-23). As noted earlier, Nikki’s father was abusive, and as a result of no longer being able to witness that abuse, Nikki moved to Knoxville with her grandparents where they, as well as Nikki’s teachers, became her safe place(s). However, it is Nikki’s “determination to live” that invites her community to “support the groaning of [her] life toward fulfillment” (Smith 85). Undoubtedly, Nikki’s move to Knoxville, away from her parents, coupled with her will to fall in love, express Nikki’s “groaning of life.”

Furthermore, Nikki’s experience with loving her eighth-grade teacher signals her acquaintance with a loving God, which supports Thurman’s third point: “God is ‘the fact of life from which all other things take their meaning and reality’” (qtd. in Smith 86).  God is All. God is the Alpha and the Omega; the beginning and the end. In making his final point, says Smith, Thurman explains how ultimate reality is perceived through knowing God, claiming such knowing is a religious experience — but not in the traditional brick-and-mortar-church-attending religious experience. Instead, one experiences God inside loving relationships — which, although I am focused here on relationships with people — includes (as Shug Avery[13] teaches us) all sentient beings. According to Smith, most important to Thurman’s ideas re: God as ultimate reality is understanding “God is not only creator, holy presence, form, and vitality, but God is also love. God embraces creation with compassion” (87). Nikki experienced God’s love within the mentorship relationship she shared with her eighth-grade teacher, for that teacher’s compassion for Nikki mirrored the compassion God has for all creation; God’s love is the ultimate “mother-love.” Thus, in that mother-loving relationship with her teacher, Nikki finds safety and, therefore, “a new sense of self” (87). Quoting Smith entirely best explains my point:

[T]he individual attains knowledge about ultimate concerns through an encounter with God; it is within this encounter that God is experienced as love. Thurman describes the individual’s experience as that which results in ‘the confidence of ultimate security.’ The individual feels embraced completely by a loving power that is responsive to his/her needs. And this not only discloses God’s nature, but it gives the individual a new sense of self. The fact that this love would be poured out upon individuals gives them the assurance of their worth within the heart of God … It is God’s compassion at this most personal level which therefore leads to the conclusion that the relationship with God is characterized by intimacy. God’s nearness is more than proximity and knowing; it is caring response to a person’s deepest needs. This experience of intimacy has the effect of making all matters of ultimate meaning conform with the sensation of God’s love. Whatever is ultimately meaningful must be consistent with God’s loving embrace of life, which includes God’s embrace of the individual. [emphasis mine] (87-88)

Thus, in Nikki’s relationship with her teacher, as well as her relationship with her grandparents, especially her grandmother, Nikki Giovanni is reacquainted with God. (And I offer reacquaintance because Nikki’s mother is her first God experience; however, the at-home abuse she witnessed was dispiriting.) Nonetheless, Nikki’s second stanza concludes with her contemplating her safety, writing: “Though maybe / I’m safe / Now / After almost thirty years / Which is as long / As I lived with my mother” (ll. 24-29).

In addition to being the poem’s volta, which is the rhetorical shift in thought or emotion, these five lines suggest Nikki’s reinstatement, if you will, of her feeling safe with her mother. Here, and into her final two stanzas, Nikki assumes her Jesus self, wherein, theorizes Thurman, “As individuals seek to conform their lives to the love felt in their religious experience, they come to the awareness that the life of the self is inextricable from the welfare of the social order” (88). Although Nikki’s poem doesn’t unveil all the creative contributions Nikki has given the world, especially her Black community, those of us familiar with Nikki Giovanni, know her life — most of which was spent in community with her mother — was also spent “inextricable from the welfare of the social order” (88). Nikki has dedicated her entire creative life manifesting Creator through her relationships with others; and they are documented in poem. As such, Nikki’s “greater sense of self is accompanied by a sense of community. Therefore, [she] seek[s] to increase the expression of love within society” (88). In the beginning was the Word …

Finally, Nikki’s last two stanzas conclude thusly:

Maybe that’s not a poem
Maybe that’s something else
Maybe I just wanted to show my father
That he needn’t be
Cruel
Maybe I just enjoyed buying
The house he had to live in
Showing her she should have married
Me instead of him
Or maybe since we will all soon
Be gone
I should be happy I found
My mother in someone
Else who loves me

What else
Really matters

Considering Nikki uses the term “maybe” five times in these final verses (seven times throughout the entire poem), I think we can arguably conclude these verses are musings meant for the poet’s own contemplation — similar to Jesus’s prayers in Gethsemane. Although Nikki may not be in agony as the about-to-be-crucified Jesus was, Nikki’s introspective tone — which is at first sullen, then self-righteous, and finally, resigned — suggests she’s been carrying a burden. And no one can be burdened by that or with whom she is not in relationship.

For whatever reason Nikki purchased the house both her parents “had to live in,” undoubtedly love operated in her decision to house and nurture both her parents with a spirit representing God’s immanence and transcendence. Nikki’s shifting tone and her five “maybes” in these last stanzas speak to Thurman’s notion that “whatever is inexplicable has been attributed to God’s mystery … [and] participation in God’s mystery results in coming to know God as a caring personality” (87). When people know God so intimately, argues Thurman, they desire to share that love with others, thus becoming an “instrument of that love” (88). And when love is given, it, too, is received. “What else / Really matters,” (ll. 44-45) asks Nikki in a question that is not a question at all.   

With all of that said, and much left unsaid, I am quite convinced: In Jesus-like fashion, Nikki Giovanni has traveled here to be our right (or write) hand of fellowship, moving inside love and living from its center, so Black Americans may know themselves as they authentically are — so that, we, too, may know God as Nikki knows — and are brazen enuf to pass that mother-love on to others. And that is worth a good cry.  

Works Cited

Du Bois, W.E.B. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” The Souls of Black Folks, Barnes & Noble Classics, 2003, pp. 7-15.

—. “Baby West.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 4-7.

—. “Chasing Utopia.” Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, William Morrow, 2013, pp. 1-3.

—. “Ego Tripping (There May Be a Reason Why).” The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, William Morrow, 2003, pp. 125-126.

—. “Gemini—A Prolonged Autobiographical Statement on Why.” Gemini: An Extended

Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty Years of Being a Black Poet, Penguin Group, 1971, pp. 133-149.

—. A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017.

—. “A Haiku for Mars.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, p. 17.

—. “A Higher Level of Poetry.” Acolytes, William Morrow, 2007, p. 103.

—. “I Married My Mother.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 60-61.

—. “Morning Breakfast Routines.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 73-74.

—. “Nikki-Rosa.” The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni, William Morrow, 2003, p 53.

—. “Poseidon Hears His Baby Boy Crying.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and  Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 75-76.

—. “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars).” Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems  and Not Quite Poems, Harper Perennial, 2011, pp. 1-4.

—. “Space: Our Frontier.” A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, William Morrow, 2017, pp. 9-11.

Smith, Luther E. “Intimate Mystery: Howard Thurman’s Search for Ultimate Meaning.” Ultimate Reality and Meaning, vol. 11, no. 2, June 1988, https://www.utpjournals.press/doi/abs/10.3138/uram.11.2.85.

Spirit Filled Life Bible for Students: Learning and Living God’s Word by the Power of His Spirit. Edited by Jack W. Hayford, Thomas Nelson Publishers, 1995.

[1] Reference to Philip José Farmer’s 1979 science fiction novel, Jesus on Mars (Pinnacle Books)

[2] Line 2 of Giovanni’s “A Haiku for Mars” from A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears and Laughter, 2017, p. 17

[3] Reference to Giovanni’s “Chasing Utopia” essay from Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid, 2013, pp. 1-3

[4] Line 30 of Giovanni’s “Nikki-Rosa” poem, first collected in Black Judgement (Broadside Lotus Press, 1968), quoted here from The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (William Morrow, 2003), p. 53

[5] Title of Giovanni’s 1970 collection

[6] During one of her lectures I attended at Florida State University circa 2000, Giovanni discussed the “alien nature” of Africans who survived the Middle Passage and re-created themselves in a New World that endeavored to dehumanize them. She was making her claim for why Blacks are well-suited for space travel, noting they “remained humane under inhumane conditions,” and therefore, could guarantee NASA they’d return to Earth as the spirited human beings they are.

[7] Phrase from line 2 of Giovanni’s prose piece, “A Higher Level of Poetry,” from Acolytes (William Morrow, 2007), p. 103

[8] Final line in Giovanni’s “Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea (We’re Going to Mars),” from Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (William Morrow, 2002), pp. 1-4

[9] Reference to Giovanni’s poem with same title from A Good Cry, 2017, pp. 73-74.

[10] Often quoted phrase coined by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, French idealist philosopher and Jesuit priest

[11] “Mother-love” is not limited to mothers who give birth. “Mother-love” can occur in relationships where a person (teacher, aunt, mentor, friend) acts as a nourishing source for another who needs such care. A “mother-love” relationship is a relationship of care. 

[12] Howard Thurman (1899-1981) was an African-American theologian, philosopher, and social activist whose ideas about religion and community informed civil rights activists like Martin Luther King, Jr.

[13] In Alice Walker’s 1982 novel The Color Purple, character Shug Avery teaches the dispirited Celie that God is All. She relies on nature to make her point, telling Celie, “I believe God is everything … trees … air … birds … other people” (167).

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