In this study, Kenneth Burke's methods of dramatistic analysis is applied to the selected poetry of Nikki Giovanni, a Black contemporary female poet. The procedure, analysis of poetry for symbolic action, is a functional approach which focuses on the poetic language, Agency. The thesis, divided into four chapters, concentrates on discovery of the Purpose, a Black female motive, for the Act, Giovanni's poetry, in the Scene, contemporary Black America.

Using Afrocentric methodologies, this dissertation argues that the Afronography, content analysis, and literally analysis of the interviews, the lives and works of Black women writers, specifically, Toni Cade Bambara, Mari Evans, Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez (BEGS), provide a model for increasing African cultural identity and ethics. As writers within this cultural movement, the Blacks Arts Movement (1965-1975) allowed BEGS to tell their stories, providing tools for their communities to build, examine and interrogate what it meant to have an African consciousness and ritualistic practice toward liberation. BEGS empowered the community in their roles as educators, mothers, and sisters, through their written literature. Additionally, they uniquely utilized their craft to promote truth, which prioritized the African principle of Maat. Thus, this study provides highlights the ways their participation within a movement holds impact and led African Americans to a practice of new rituals in America, that serves as an African continuity extending from Kemet. This inquiry defines Afrocentric Ìgbaradì, the Afronographic Narrative and extrapolates themes of Black womanhood to establish poignant aspects of the foundation established by these writers. Their influence imagined a future intellect where African art creates a narrative and regains its value to be praised through the hands of its creator rather than stolen legacies. / Africology and African American Studies