Nikki Giovanni’s extraordinary final collection—a landmark of American literature—speaks to the fury of our current political moment while reflecting on the tragedies and triumphs of her early life.

For decades, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has been at the forefront of American culture. The New Book is a towering work of protest against the divisions of our time, leavened with moments of joy and reflection about her indelible legacy, her family history, and the small pleasures of her richly lived life.

In The New Book, Nikki Giovanni slashes at the ridiculousness of our cultural and political climate: “We have no secrets/since the world shrunk/and the icebergs melted/and all the year books/are digitized./… and we press Like/or No Like/as if it mattered.”

She remembers 2020 and its cataclysmic reckoning with police brutality and white supremacy: “I do understand that republicans/Are cowards and so are those nazis/Cheering/And those kkk we now call police killing/Not to mention father and sons chasing unarmed Black men/and running their cars into crowds/Pretending they are brave or something/They are not only cowards/And nazis but evil fools/And who go to bed white/Wake up American/And hate themselves for having/To share this earth/They will not overcome/And we will not love them.”

But also in the same poem: “But what does 2020 mean to me/A chance to learn to open oysters/Talk to my friends/Catch up on my reading/Tell myself I am going to dust the house/Lie about it/...Enjoy my own company not to mention football/And remember there will be tomorrow/Because there will be/And evil will go and good will come/I am Black/We have seen much worse.”

With this collection, which includes brief letters and short prose from her life as well as poetry, Giovanni reaffirms her place as a giant of literature, a canny truth-teller, an indispensable radical orator, and one of America’s preeminent cultural critics. It is a book to be savored, and shared.

"If there was a need for poetry that galvanized and inspired, there was also a demand for poetry that comforted and unified — and Ms. Giovanni provided on both counts." — The Washington Post

From one of America's most cherished and celebrated poets, a landmark collection of Nikki Giovanni's early work from the transformational years of 1968-1998!

“Nikki Giovanni is one of our national treasures.”—Gloria Naylor

In celebration of the 250th anniversary of the United States, HarperCollins is proud to present this library of American classics drawn from our storied catalog. This timeless classic brings readers Nikki Giovanni's poems from her books Black Feeling Black Talk; Black Judgement; Re: Creation; My House; The Women and the Men; Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day; and Those Who Ride the Night Winds.

When Nikki Giovanni’s poems first emerged during the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s, she immediately took a place among the most celebrated and controversial artists of our time. More than 50 years later, Giovanni still stands as one of the most commanding, luminous voices to grace America’s political and poetic landscape.

Stirring, provocative, and resonant, these poems heralded the arrival of an indelible literary voice that resounds to this day.

The complete early work of the renowned poet—available for the first time ias a Harper Perennial Modern Classic. . . . “Nikki Giovanni is one of our national treasures.”—Gloria Naylor

Ackowledged by Oprah WInfrey as “one of the 25 women who changed her life,” Nikki Giovanni is a living legend. When her poems first emerged during the Black Arts Movement in the 1960s, Giovanni immediately became one of the most celebrated, controversial, and influential poets of the era. Today, Giovanni remains one of the most commanding and luminous voices to grace our political and poetic landscape.

This omnibus includes her first seven volumes of poetry from her early years, 1967 to 1983: Black Feeling Black Talk; Black Judgement; Re: Creation; My House; The Women and the Men; Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day; and Those Who Ride the Night Winds. A timeles classic, it is both a refelction of the changes in her own life and an evocation of a nation’s past and its present.

The poetry of Nikki Giovanni has spurred movements, turned hearts and informed generations. She’s been hailed as a firebrand, a radical, a healer, and a sage; a wise and courageous voice who has spoken out on the sensitive issues, including race and gender, that touch our national consciousness.

As energetic and relevant as ever, Nikki now offers us an intimate, affecting, and illuminating look at her personal history and the mysteries of her own heart. In A Good Cry, she takes us into her confidence, describing the joy and peril of aging and recalling the violence that permeated her parents’ marriage and her early life. She pays homage to the people who have given her life meaning and joy: her grandparents, who took her in and saved her life; the poets and thinkers who have influenced her; and the students who have surrounded her. Nikki also celebrates her good friend, Maya Angelou, and the many years of friendship, poetry, and kitchen-table laughter they shared before Angelou’s death in 2014.

“I had no idea
Grandmother had to beg
A white man to let me
enroll in Austin High
Where I needed clothes
From Miller and Rich’s
Shoes a coat and stuff
All I knew then
Was the sound
Of my father hitting
My mother every Saturday
Night until I heard
Her say ‘Gus, please
Don’t hit me.’
And I knew my choice: Leave or kill him
Both were sad
I am in the hospital
Room
With yellow tulips
From Nancy and Diana
And a beautiful bouquet
From the English Department
I am trying to learn
how to cry
It’s not that my life
has been a lie
But that I repressed
My tears.”
—From Baby West

One of America’s most celebrated poets challenges us with this powerful and deeply personal collection of verse that speaks to the injustices of society while illuminating the depths of her own heart.

For more than fifty years, Nikki Giovanni’s poetry has dazzled and inspired readers. As sharp and outspoken as ever, she returns with this profound book of poetry in which she continues to call attention to injustice and racism, celebrate Black culture and Black lives, and give readers an unfiltered look into her own experiences.

In Make Me Rain, she celebrates her loved ones and unapologetically declares her pride in her Black heritage, while exploring the enduring impact of the twin sins of racism and white nationalism. Giovanni reaffirms her place as a uniquely vibrant and relevant American voice with poems such as “I Come from Athletes” and “Rainy Days”—calling out segregation and Donald Trump; as well as “Unloved (for Aunt Cleota)” and “When I Could No Longer”—her personal elegy for the relatives who saved her from an abusive home life.

Stirring, provocative, and resonant, the poems in Make Me Rain pierce the heart and nourish the soul. 

Selected Poems is the classic volume by the distinguished and celebrated poet Gwendolyn Brooks, winner of the 1950 Pulitzer Prize, and recipient of the National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters. This compelling collection showcases Brooks's technical mastery, her warm humanity, and her compassionate and illuminating response to a complex world. This edition also includes a special PS section with insights, interviews, and more—including a short piece by Nikki Giovanni entitled "Remembering Gwen."

By 1963 the civil rights movement was in full swing across the United States, and more and more African American writers were increasingly outspoken in attacking American racism and insisting on full political, economic, and social equality for all. In that memorable year of the March on Washington, Harper & Row released Brooks’s Selected Poems, which incorporated poems from her first three collections, as well as a selection of new poems.

This edition of Selected Poems includes A Street in Bronzeville, Brooks's first published volume of poetry for which she became nationally known and which led to successive Guggenheim fellowships; Annie Allen, published one year before she became the first African American author to win the Pulitzer Prize in any category; and The Bean Eaters, her fifth publication which expanded her focus from studies of the lives of mainly poor urban black Americans to the heroism of early civil rights workers and events of particular outrage—including the 1955 Emmett Till lynching and the 1957 school desegregation crisis in Little Rock, Arkansas.

A stunning visual homage to Black bookstores around the country along with profiles and essays that celebrate the history, community, activism, and culture these spaces embody, featuring an original foreword by Nikki Giovanni.

Black literature is perhaps the most powerful, polarizing force in the modern American zeitgeist. Today—as Black novels draw authoritarian ire, as Black memoirs shape public debates, as Black polemics inspire protest petitions—it’s more important than ever to highlight the places that center these stories: Black bookstores.

Traversing teeming metropolises and tiny towns, Prose to the People explores these spaces, chronicling the Black bookstore's past and present lives. Combining narrative prose, eye-catching photography, one-on-one interviews, original essays, and specially curated poetry, Prose to the People is a reader’s road trip companion to the world of Black books.

Thoughtfully curated by writer and Black bookstore owner Katie Mitchell, Prose to the People is a must-have addition to the shelves of anyone who loves book culture and Black history. A visually rich tribute, this dynamic book centers profiles of over fifty Black bookstores from the Northeast to the mid-Atlantic, the South, and the West Coast, complete with stunning original and archival photography.

Interspersed throughout are essays, poems, and interviews by New York Times bestsellers Kiese Laymon, Rio Cortez, Pearl Cleage, and many more journalists, activists, authors, academics, and poets that offer deeper perspectives on these bookstores' role throughout the diaspora. Complete with a foreword by world-renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni, Prose to the People is a beautiful tribute to these vital pillars of the Black community.

The best-selling classic about a mixed-race child in the Civil War–era South that “chronicles the triumph of a free spirit over many kinds of bondage” (New York Times Book Review).

Jubilee tells the true story of Vyry, the child of a white plantation owner and his black mistress. Vyry bears witness to the antebellum South in both its opulence and its brutality, its wartime ruin, and the promises of Reconstruction.

Weaving her own family’s oral history with thirty years of research, Margaret Walker brings the everyday experiences of slaves to light in a novel that churns with the hunger, the hymns, the struggles, and the very breath of American history.

“A revelation.”—Milwaukee Journal

Includes a Foreword by Nikki Giovanni

An amateur online sleuth must enlist the help of a jaded PI to clear her name while taking down a shady tech start-up in this exhilarating romantic suspense novel.

Fiona Addai is ready to set her plan in motion. To honor the anniversary of her brother’s death, she’s going to steal back his brilliant invention from the ruthless corporation that stole and claimed it as their own. As a famed Reddit detective known as @Princess_PI, Fiona has used her online connections and sleuthing skills to time every step down to the minute. But with one disastrous misstep, instead of getting justice, Fiona finds herself accused of murder.

Maurice Bennett is no stranger to insomnia. These days, he’s not losing sleep over the cases he’s solving—but running from the one he couldn’t. Instead, he’s been settling for small-time scandals that don’t stir up the guilt he’s buried. But when he spots Fiona Addai at the center of a murder investigation, something clicks. And for the first time in a long while, Maurice feels that old spark of intrigue.

However, Fiona is not the helpless damsel she appears to be. Sure, she needs Maurice’s help to clear her name, but she’s got conditions of her own: she wants a crash course in real-world detective work. Maurice isn’t exactly thrilled. With every late-night stakeout and tension-filled interrogation, their partnership, rife with tension and unexpected chemistry, unravels a dangerous web of corporate crime and familial secrets. To bring the real killer to light, they'll need to trust each other and that might be the most dangerous gamble of all.

A fast-paced, juicy debut novel that peeks behind the curtain at the cutthroat world of hip-hop music and the glamorous magazine scene in the late 1990s, written by the ultimate insider

It's 1999, and Nikki Rose is the only Black editor on the staff of a prestigious fashion magazine she once thought would be her ticket to becoming a respected editor in chief. But after being told one too many times by her boss that “Black girls don’t sell magazines,” she quits to take over Sugar, a struggling hip hop music and lifestyle magazine with untapped potential.

Thrown into an entirely new world of wealth, decadence, and debauchery, Nikki has just six months to save Sugar―and her own dreams. As she pulls all-nighters at the office and parties with New York City’s most influential bad boys, Nikki must prove she has what it takes to lead. But her most dangerous challenge is evading Alonzo Griffin, her very married, very powerful ex-lover and former boss, who is determined to destroy both her and Sugar. Along the way, Nikki leans on a circle of loyal friends and navigates unexpected romances that force her to reckon with what―and who―she truly wants.

If I Ruled the World is a smart, utterly immersive journey through one of the most dynamic eras in pop culture history―a story of ambition, friendship, love, and finding your own voice.

An inspiring memoir of family, community, and resilience, and an ode to the power of books to help us understand ourselves, from the renowned founder of Well-Read Black Girl.
 
“She is a friend of my mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order.”—Toni Morrison, Beloved
 
For Glory Edim, that “friend of my mind” is books. Edim, who grew up in Virginia to Nigerian immigrant parents, started the popular Well-Read Black Girl book club at age thirty, eventually reaching a community of half a million readers. But her own love of books stretches far back.
 
Edim’s father moved back to Nigeria while she was still a child, marking the beginning of a series of traumatic changes and losses for her family. What became an escape, a safe space, and a second home for her and her brother was their local library. Books were where Edim found community, and as she grew older she discovered authors and ideas that she wasn’t being taught about in class. Reading wherever and whenever she could, be it in her dorm room or when traveling by subway or plane, she found the Black writers whose words would forever change her life: Nikki Giovanni, through children’s poetry cassettes; Maya Angelou, through a critical high school English teacher; Toni Morrison, while attending Morrison’s alma mater, Howard University; Audre Lorde, on a flight to Nigeria. In prose full of both joy and heartbreak, Edim recounts how these writers and so many others taught her how to value herself by helping her to find her own voice when her mother lost hers, to trust her feelings when her father remarried, and to create bonds with other Black women and uplift their stories.
 
Gather Me is a glowing testament to how the power of representation in literature can gather the disparate parts that make us who we are and assemble them into a portrait of discovery.