Giovanni further develops the themes of vio-
lence and revolution in “Adulthood (For Clau-
dia)”; however, she also focuses on the role of
African-American women in the revolution, a
theme that still interests her today. For example,
in Quilting the Black Eyed Pea (2002), Giovanni
pays homage to African-American women, in-
cluding her grandmother, her mother, Rosa Parks,
and Mamie Till Bradley, the mother of EMMETT
TILL, who was kidnapped and murdered by two
white men in Money, Mississippi, in 1955. The
place of the black woman and black intellectual
in the Black Power movement is foregrounded
in a number of her poems, for example, “Rac-
ism 101.” In “Adulthood” Giovanni describes the
choice a young black female had to make between
becoming part of the “colored bourgeois,” which
is expected of her, or becoming involved in the so-
cial activism of the Black Power movement. She
embraces the latter course and eventually rejects
the former. However, Giovanni is careful not to
dismiss the importance of the black intellectuals
in the movement. She writes:
for a while progress was being made along
with a certain
degree
of happiness cause I wrote a book and
found a love
and organized a theater and even gave
some lectures on
Black history
and began to believe all good people could
get
together and win without bloodshed.
(Giovanni, 69)Giovanni challenges the black intellectuals who
seek solace in the academy to become more in-
volved in the black liberation struggle.
Giovanni is currently the University Distin-
guished Professor of English at Virginia Tech in
Blacksburg, Virginia. She does not separate her
role as an activist from that of an academic, and
this becomes clear in the writing she continues
to produce and the talks she gives at universities
across the country. She continues to chronicle Af-
rican-American history, pay homage to African-
American leaders, and celebrate African-American
culture and tradition. She demonstrates great pride
and love for human beings in her writing.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Giovanni, Nikki. Gemini: An Extended Autobiographi-
cal Statement on My First Twenty-five Years of Being
a Black Poet. New York: Penguin Books, 1971.
Hodges, John. Furious Flower: Warriors. Film. San
Francisco: California Newsreel, 1998.
Deirdre RaynorGlave, Thomas (1964– )
Born in Jamaica in 1964, Thomas Glave spent his
childhood in Kingston as well as in the Bronx,
New York. By his own account, he started writ-
ing at age four or five. Educated in private and
Catholic schools in New York City, Glave majored
in English and Latin American studies at Bowdoin
College, graduating with honors in 1993. He re-
ceived a master’s of fine arts degree in fiction from
Brown University in 1998. Glave then spent one
year in Jamaica as a Fulbright scholar, research-
ing the rich intellectual and literary heritage of
Jamaica and the Caribbean. He is an assistant pro-
fessor of English at Binghamton University, State
University of New York, where he teaches courses
on JAMES BALDWIN, Nadine Gordimer, PAULE MAR-
SHALL, Maryse Condé, Simone Schwarz-Bart, JA-
MAICA KINCAID, African and African-American
queer writers, 20th-century Caribbean and Latin-
American queer writers, Jamaican literary histori-
ography, and Jamaican maroon societies.
Glave’s short stories, articles, and essays have
been published in anthologies as well as in several
periodicals, including Black Renaissance/Renais-
sance Noire, CALLALOO, The Evergreen Chronicles,
Gay Community News, The Jamaica Daily Ob-
server, The Jamaica Sunday Herald, The James
White Review, The Kenyon Review, and The Mas-
sachusetts Review. In 1997, he received the coveted
O’Henry Award for his story “The Final Inning,”
published in The Kenyon Review. His first col-
lection of short stories, Whose Song? and OtherGlave, Thomas 203