Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate

Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy Like My Sister Kate: Looking at the Harlem Renaissance through poems
by Nikki Giovanni
14+
*****

Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy is African American history and social issues and conflict and celebration and ... great poetry.  I thought this book was going to deconstruct the Harlem Renaissance using poems for textual support. I was expecting a history book with some poetry.  Instead it was a collection of poetry which decribed the Harlem Renaissance, was the Harlem Renaisscance.  I loved this book.  I think it should be used as a textbook to teach black history.  The experiences and people and feelings in the book are the why and the what behind the Harlem Renaissance.  The poems are raw testaments of the African American and at times made me think critically about myself in respect to minorities as with one line from Langston Hughes' Theme for English B "As I learn from you, I guess you learn from me- although you're older-and white-and somewhat more free." I thought of the inequality in place even today when I go to Grant Wood for block A.  My student and I are supposed to be learning from each other but I am still the educated, white, teacher and he is still the black student from the southside of Chicago.  People will have preconceptions about him before he is eight.  There were many times when I could directly relate to the narrator about love and fear and simply human experiances.  Ntozake Shange in it's not so good to be born a girl/ sometimes writes "i'm so saddened that being born a girl makes it dangerous to attend midnight mass unescorted".  I may have a lot more security than Ntozake did as an African American girl in the mid 1900s but I am saddened that being a girl restricts what I do, where I go.  That I have reason to be afraid when there are not any street lamps.

Using Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy in a classroom would have to be well thought out because it is a complex text.  It is not a text book.  I put it at ages 14+ based on the classroom environment while I believe younger students  might be capable of reading and appreciating it.  Many of the poems cover sensitive subjects and use uncensored language.  Teaching it would require maturity on the readers part.  I would like to use it as textual support for the Civil Rights movement.  History in the classroom is often taught with
key events and dates that give no real understanding to past or lasting knowledge.  Shimmy Shimmy Shimmy  would give students a much deep understanding of the complexities of the time period.  Students could even choose one particular poem/ author and connect it to their understanding of social issues.