In 1978, Nikki Giovanni, a decade-plus into her celebrated career as a poet and major figure in the black renaissance in American poetry, issued Cotton Candy On A Rainy Day. Critics called it depressing, but any girl who has read it knows it’s just the realest real talk. When I was 13, I found this book on my mom’s shelf. It was the first poem I’d ever read that I connected to and it made me realize poetry was and could be something beyond kiddie rhymes and white dudes who’d been dead 300 years already. 

—Jessica H.