Family and True Feelings

In many cases, it is often shown that in order to avoid issues such as death, people choose to keep their guard up instead of opening up to one another. Death is a topic that is usually kept unspoken of when one is not ready for another to pass. People, families especially, tend to keep quiet or set up a front enabling one from expressing their true feelings on the issue. There is struggle between letting our feelings out, and being able to act as a strong figure is often shown in literature, such as poetry.
In her poem, “Legacies,” Nikki Giovanni shows how families choose to make the topic of death a “touchy” subject, instead of being open about it, which is shown through her characters, the grandmother and the granddaughter. In “Legacies,” Nikki Giovanni shows the struggle that the grandmother and the granddaughter endure when the topic of death is brought up. This struggle can be brought up when tradition is being passed down. Whether the person wants to accept it or not, the tradition is being passed down because death is in the future.
The grandmother wants the granddaughter to learn how to make rolls, which is a long running family tradition. The grandmother, trying to avoid the obvious reason, does not explain why the granddaughter would have to learn how to make the rolls. Instead of reaching out to her granddaughter, the grandmother brushes it off and says, “Lord these children. ” In response to the grandmothers statement about making the rolls, the granddaughter says that she does not want learn the tradition