Make Me Rain

May 1, 2020

Distinguished African American poet/activist Giovanni, winner of the Black Caucus of the ALA Honor Award for Nonfiction among dozens of other awards, celebrates her heritage and head-butts Donald Trump's policies in her first volume of verse in seven years. With a 50,000-copy first printing.

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September 1, 2020
Giovanni's latest collection is her finest to date. Imbued with the classic, accessible, and deeply empathetic style of this venerated American poet, these works touch on topics ranging from aging, memories of childhood, elegies for loved ones who have passed, and pride in Black heritage. Giovanni presents beautiful ruminations on history ("We sang the blues in the cotton fields / Not to complain / about our lives but to let / Each other know / We are still here / We stirred the blues / In our stews"), and offers eloquent observations of our time, bringing the personal and the political into inextricable connection. The strongest are reflections of the poet's own legacy, as in Biography: "So that is this / Bio / I'm here / And if I mist / On emotional soil / A weed will / Grow / Make me rain / Let me be a part / Of this needed change." Giovanni's ability to pare down complex subjects in exquisitely succinct poetic forms makes her work timeless and profoundly resonant for both poetry aficionados and casual readers.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

November 23, 2020
Giovanni (Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid) celebrates in her poignant 20th collection art as redemptive of traumas past and present, illuminating the ways in which “the blues is our encyclopedia.” With a mind attuned to ironies, Giovanni considers refuge from systemic injustice: “I remember sitting/ During the age of segregation/ In the ‘colored’ car/ Where the Pullman Porters looked out/ For my sister and me/ And we didn’t understand we were/ Not wanted/ We loved it.” In “When I Could No Longer,” speakers affirm the healing power of community against personal abuse, elegizing godmothers, grandmothers, educators and friends, including the late Toni Morrison. The most memorable moments in the collection reveal the cutting directness that made her a laureate of the Black Arts Movement: “The blues may talk about/ My man/ Or my woman/ Who left me/ Or took my money/ And is gone/ But what they mean/ Is I was stolen/ In an African war.” Similarly, in “Lemonade Grows From Soil, Too,” the speaker wryly notes, “Everybody wants to confuse love with sex. Ask Bill Cosby about that.” Such pleasurable jolts offset the collection’s more rhetorically slack moments and reinforce Giovanni’s unapologetic commitment to documenting both injustice and joy.