On Nikki Giovanni and the writing that got you through high school

I was sad to hear that the great American poet Nikki Giovanni passed away this week. Not like I knew the woman personally or had been steadily tracking her work lately. I just remembered having stumbled upon and loving her poem “Revolutionary Dreams” in high school. Your senior high school year book quote has got to be one of the most deliberated two lines on earth, and I chose the end of Nikki Giovanni’s “Revolutionary Dreams” for mine:

then i awoke and dug
that if i dreamed natural
dreams of being a natural
woman doing what a woman
does when she’s natural
i would have a revolution.

I didn’t even know what it really was to be a woman at the time—God, do I now?— but something about those words resonated with me—particularly in high school, where everything felt like a bit of a sham.

I went to a small Catholic high school in the 90s in Texas, where little made sense: Not the way female athletes got the old uniforms and male athletes got brand new ones plus free lunches from cheerleaders on game days, not the way my friend Amanda got made fun of and dumped on when she got in that free-lunch line as a female volleyball player and asked for her free lunch, and certainly not the pushback my friend TJ got when she asked to be on the football team as a woman. And don’t even get me started around debutante in our Texan hometown and why it had to reign over every girl’s senior year.

I hid from high school in literature and music, and at a friend’s recommendation, bought a copy of On the Road. Junior high and high school always seems to be the time when you first get exposed to the Beats, their work an antidote or salve to the narrowmindedness you encounter during that 9 to 3 until the bell rings. I had liked the poems of Allen Ginsberg, but I remember being disappointed in On the Road, because there was no space in that narrative for me as a woman. Who was I supposed to be in this - Annoying Nag #3 or Whore with the Shriveled Up Tits We Still Had a Good Time With #4?

I don’t remember where I came across Ms. Giovanni’s poem my senior year of high school — probably in an anthology for class. But I liked it because it didn’t just leave space for a woman, it made our contribution to the revolution essential. It was honest and simple but also scarily straightforward, this idea that you could stage an effective revolution by merely being yourself. Now there’s an idea with teeth.

Thinking of you today, Ms. Giovanni - and Amanda and TJ, wherever you are.

What writing helped get you through high school? Does it still mean as much to you today as it did then?