Reflections by Affrilachian Poet Asha French on a talk given by Nikki Giovanni at the 2019 Furious Flower Summer Legacy Seminars honoring the life and work of Giovanni. “Right now, if you were driving… Well, nobody has flat tires anymore. But if you had a flat tire in the old days when people had flat tires, the best place to be was in Appalachia.” The world-renowned Nikki Giovanni is “caping” for Appalachia, and her “you” is me—a Black woman who, before talking with Giovanni, might have been afraid to stop alone in any Appalachian “old day” with four good tires. My “really?” betrayed the conditioning Giovanni works to undo. “Oh,…