SOURCE: "A Free Spirit of the '60s," in Washington Post Book World, February 13, 1994, pp. 4-5.

In the following review of Racism 101, Crockett argues that Giovanni accurately reflects African-American views on race.

Poet Nikki Giovanni is caught up in the past and the future at the same time. In Racism 101, her latest collection of largely autobiographical essays, she describes herself as a '60s woman and a Star Trek fanatic. These two obsessions are like highway markers on her life's path, pointing the way to where she's been and where she's headed. Giovanni first captured the nation's attention as one of the most powerful voices in the black culture movement of the 1960s. Her work, then as now, is all about perspective—first as a black, next as a woman, then as an American, but ultimately as a human being in a complex universe.

Talking about Shakespeare in...