The acclaimed poet Nikki Giovanni created this book by asking her friends--writers like Gloria Naylor, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Maxine Hong Kingston--for their stories and recollections of their grandmothers, then to a group of writers in their nineties for their thoughts. Grand Mothers celebrates those special women in every culture who preserve heritage and prepare the future. "A diverse and moving tribute.” ― Publishers Weekly “While contributions from established writers....act as lures, the real treasure here are offered by relatively unkown authors. A diverse and moving tribute.” ― Publishers Weekly “The portrait of a grandmotherhood that comes into focus here is three-demensional and full-blooded, and the deversity of setiment and opinion as to what a grandmother means is the very quality that makes this collection such an enthralling, authentic read.” ― Voice of Youth Advocates Nikki Giovanni wrote many books of poetry for children and adults, including Rosa , a Caldecott Honor book, Lincoln and Douglass , The Genie in the Jar , and Ego-tripping and Other Poems for Young People . Giovanni called herself, "a Black American, a daughter, a mother, a professor of English." She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and grew up in Lincoln Heights, an all-black suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio. She studied at Fisk University, the University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia University. She published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling Black Talk , in 1968, and since then became one of America’s most widely read poets. Oprah Winfrey named her as one of her twenty-five “Living Legends.” Her autobiography Gemini was a finalist for the National Book Award, and several of her books received NAACP Image Awards. She received twenty-five honorary degrees, and numerous other distinctions, including being named Woman of the Year by Mademoiselle Magazine , The Ladies Home Journal and Ebony , the first recipient of the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for poetry. Nikki Giovanni lived in Christiansburg, Virginia, where she was a professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute. She died in 2024 at the age of 81.