A collection of 50 new poems, sketches, and meditations charts new territory, including popular culture and life in America, the poet's own battle with illness, relationships between mothers and their children, legendary historical figures, the South, the recent terrorist attacks, and Giovanni's own childhood. When Nikki Giovanni's poems first emerged during the Civil Rights and Black Arts Movements of the 1960s, she immediately took a place among...

Rosa Parks is one of the most famous figures in American history. on December 1, 1955, she got on a Montgomery, Alabama, city bus after work and refused to give up her seat to a white man, an act that sparked a revolution.

In Poem for Black Boys, she writes: "Where are your heroes, my little Black ones / You are the Indian you so disdainfully shoot / Not the big bad sheriff on his faggoty white horse / You should play run-away-slave or Mau-Mau / These are more in line with your history." By the author of Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day.