Empowering Strategies at Home in the Works of Nikki Giovanni and Rita Dove

This thesis focuses on the presence of Black women characters in domestic contexts in the early poetry of African American poets Nikki Giovanni and Rita Dove and examines the strategies these women employ, individually and in close relationships, in order to empower themselves and sustain those around them. It provides a joint exploration of the work of two major contemporary poets from a literary and interdisciplinary perspective, mapping instances of the poetic expression of Black feminist politics. The theoretical approach builds on a range of understandings of empowerment, strategy, and the central importance of home in an African American context, as conceptualized primarily in the work of Black feminists, in particular Patricia Hill Collins and bell hooks. Structurally, the study follows the cycle of a woman’s life from girlhood to old age. Thus, poems involving the empowerment strategies of girls at home are explored first. They are followed by poems where the domestic lives of adult women and then elderly women are addressed, with a focus on their respective empowering strategies. Discussed last are strategies of empowerment evident in the interactions of (largely) Black women of different generations in poems depicting intergenerational contacts and relationships. Homeplaces created by Black women have historically been experienced as sheltering African Americans from the perils of the dominant white society and thereby Black women’s domestic experiences have generally been linked to privilege rather than to confinement and victimization. In the poems, when at home, Black women utilize different strategies to assert themselves and each other, implicitly or explicitly, emerging strong and resilient, even though sometimes they may merely derive satisfaction from their poor circumstances. Strong connections to the past and a sense of belonging, partaking in legacies and storytelling, as well as memory, imagination, dreaming and hiding, are recurring elements of their empowerment processes. However, their enjoyment of loving bonds and their sharing of African-derived knowledges and ways of being emerge as the most significant aspects contributing to their empowerment