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Thinking on Ms. Giovanni

Shane Paul Neil
3 min readDec 11, 2024

My mother was a cultural touchstone in my life, especially when it came to music and literature. Especially when it came to Black music and literature. My appreciation and love for the likes of Ralph Ellison, Gordon Parks and Nina Simone were planted by her. Since her passing last year these names and others have been the connective tissue that drives my memory of her.

Waking up this morning and learning of the death of Nikki Giovanni only served to tug on that tissue.

My mother introduced me to Giovanni the way she did so many authors. With one of her books (I can’t remember which) laying on my bed with a simple inscription “To Shane, enjoy.” ‘with the date of her gift written below.

As a young man, I was filled with angst and sadness. I was filled with all these things I wanted to say. There was a writer in me. Even as a child that was clear. In the eighth grade I wrote a short detective story (with me as the protagonist). I was supposed to write an essay about what I wanted to be when I grew up. More than saying what I wanted to be, I demonstrated. As I grew older what I would come to lack was the attention span to write a book or even an essay about what twisted inside of me.

Where I once thought poetry was this flowery thing built solely for the expression of beauty Giovanni’s poetry was more akin to the vegetable…

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Shane Paul Neil
Shane Paul Neil

Written by Shane Paul Neil

Writer (duh) and photographer. Bylines @levelmag @complex @ebony @huffpo shanepaulneil.com

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