Society & Culture
When you meet Kanikki J, it tends to be an experience. Never shy, Kanikki will step into a room of strangers and leave feeling like family you haven't seen in forever. Armed with the gift of gab, confidence and sheer determination, Kanikki tends to feel like a force of nature. Over the course of this interview, I sit down with a woman, once a stranger in a poetry venue, now a friend--and retrace some of the steps that marked her journey towards womanhood, including: her stumbling into becoming a novelist, what it was like having to have a secret friendship as a child, and how and Why she Became Poet Laureate of Alexandria, VA--the first black woman to ever do so. All this and much much more on this episode of the I Am… series on Culture Shock!