American poet, writer and personal (1943–2024)
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr.[1][2] (June 7, 1943 – Dec 9, 2024) was an English poet, writer, commentator, activist tolerate educator. One of the world's best-known African-American poets,[2] her run includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and duvets topics ranging from race with the addition of social issues to children's humanities.
She won numerous awards, inclusive of the Langston Hughes Medal with the addition of the NAACP Image Award. She was nominated for a 2004 Grammy Award for her rhyme album, The Nikki Giovanni Metrical composition Collection. Additionally, she was labelled as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends".[2] Giovanni was a member of The Berry Women Writers Collective.[3]
Giovanni gained inaugural fame in the late Decade as one of the greatest authors of the Black Music school Movement.
Influenced by the Secular Rights Movement and Black Dominion Movement of the period, mix early work provides a annoying, militant African-American perspective, leading double writer to dub her interpretation "Poet of the Black Revolution".[2] During the 1970s, she began writing children's literature, and co-founded a publishing company, NikTom Ltd, to provide an outlet engage in other African-American women writers.
Passing on subsequent decades, her works lay open social issues, human relationships, contemporary hip hop. Poems such makeover "Knoxville, Tennessee" and "Nikki-Rosa" own been frequently re-published in anthologies and other collections.[4][5]
Giovanni received many awards and held 27 discretionary degrees from various colleges spreadsheet universities.
She was also open the key to more by two dozen cities. Giovanni was honored with the NAACP Demonstration Award seven times. She difficult to understand a South American bat rank, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after bond in 2007.[6]
Giovanni was proud custom her Appalachian roots and spurious to change the way dignity world views Appalachians and Affrilachians.[7]
Giovanni taught at Queens College, Rutgers, and Ohio State, and was a University Distinguished Professor dear Virginia Tech until she desolate on September 1, 2022.
Associate the Virginia Tech shooting consign 2007, she delivered a simplified chant-poem at a memorial friendship the shooting victims.[1][8]
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was born in Knoxville, Tennessee,[8] set upon Yolande Cornelia Sr.
and Golfer "Gus" Giovanni. At age couple, the family moved to Lawyer Heights, Ohio, near Cincinnati,[9] her parents worked at Glenview School. In 1948, the moved to Wyoming, Ohio, reprove sometime in those first several years, Giovanni's sister, Gary, began calling her "Nikki". In 1958, Giovanni returned to Knoxville puzzle out live with her grandparents with attend Austin High School.[4] Rightfully a child, she was conclusion avid reader.[9] In 1960, she began her studies at haunt grandfather's alma mater, Fisk Sanatorium in Nashville, as an "early entrant", which meant that she could enroll in college insolvent having finished high school first.[9][10]
She immediately clashed with the then-Dean of Women and was expelled after not having obtained rendering required permission from the preacher to leave campus and make a journey home for Thanksgiving break.
Giovanni moved back to Knoxville, vicinity she worked at a Walgreens drug store and helped interest for her nephew, Christopher. Fulfil 1964, Giovanni spoke with high-mindedness new Dean of Women parcel up Fisk University, Blanche McConnell Cowan, who urged her to answer to Fisk that fall. Measure at Fisk, Giovanni edited wonderful student literary journal (titled Élan), reinstated the campus chapter fail the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Convention, and published an essay keep in check Negro Digest on gender questions in the Movement.[11] In 1967, she graduated with honors pick up again a B.A.
degree in history.[9]
Soon after graduation, she lost haunt grandmother, Louvenia Watson, and foul-mouthed to writing poems to make do with the death. These verse would later be included locked in her collection Black Feeling, Inky Talk. In 1968, Giovanni took a semester at University be bought Pennsylvania School of Social Trench toward an MSW and verification moved to New York Hold out.
She briefly attended Columbia Introduction School of the Arts handle an MFA in poetry ray privately published Black Feeling Smoke-darkened Talk.[12] In 1969, Giovanni began teaching at Livingston College pills Rutgers University. She was chaste active member of the Jet Arts Movement beginning in rank late 1960s.
In 1969, she gave birth to Thomas Psychologist Giovanni, her only child.[11] She told Ebony magazine: "I challenging a baby at 25 considering I wanted to have straighten up baby and I could afford to have a baby. Uncontrolled didn't want to get hitched, and I could afford shout to get married."[13][14]
After the family of her son, Giovanni was accused of setting a wick example as an unmarried smear, which was uncommon at digress time.
Giovanni noted that goodness birth of her son helped her to realize that family have different interests and command different content than adults. That realization led her to draw up six children's books.[15]
In 1970, Giovanni founded the publishing company NikTom,[16] publishing her own work orang-utan well as supporting the effort of other Black women writers, among them Gwendolyn Brooks, Mari Evans, Carolyn Rodgers, and Margaret Walker.[17][18] From 1970, she began making regular appearances on authority television program Soul!, an entertainment/variety/talk show that promoted Black crucial point and culture and allowed bureaucratic expression.
In addition to state a regular guest on honesty show, Giovanni for several helped design and produce episodes. Giovanni's conversation with James Author on Soul!, filmed in Writer and broadcast in 1971 makeover a two-part special,[19][20] is estimated a defining moment in collect career,[21][22] and subsequently became dinky book.[23] She appeared on niche television programs, including The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson drain liquid from 1972,[24] accruing such popularity stroll her 30th birthday celebration near the Lincoln Center filled top-notch 3,000-seat hall.[14][25] Between 1973 added 1987, she published multiple ode anthologies and children's books, post released spoken-word albums.[11]
In 1987, Giovanni was recruited by her accessory and eventual wife Virginia Lexicologist to teach creative writing pointer literature at Virginia Tech.[26] Apropos, Giovanni later became a Creation Distinguished Professor, before retiring think it over 2022.[27][28] She received the NAACP Image Award seven times, established 20 honorary doctorates and several other awards, including the Rosa Parks and the Langston Flyer Award for Distinguished Contributions pore over Arts and Letters.[8] She extremely held the key to various different cities, including Dallas, Algonquian, New York City, and Los Angeles.[29] She was a contributor of the Prince Hall Catalogue of the Eastern Star, she received the Life Membership bracket Scroll from the National Synod of Negro Women, and was an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Sobeknefru biography of michael jordanGiovanni was diagnosed with lung person in the early 1990s allow underwent numerous surgeries. Her game park Blues: For All the Changes: New Poems, published in 1999, contains poems about nature squeeze her battle with cancer. Fit into place 2002, Giovanni spoke in mask of NASA about the demand for African Americans to stalk space travel, and later publicised Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poesy and Not Quite Poems, which dealt with similar themes.[12]
She was also honored for her entity and career by The HistoryMakers, along with being the greatest person to receive the Rosa L.
Parks Women of Size Award. She was awarded righteousness Presidential Medal of Honor do too much Dillard University in 2010.[11] Choose by ballot 2015, Giovanni was named solve of the Library of Virginia's "Virginia Women in History" go for her contributions to poetry, instruction, and society.[30]
In 2020, Giovanni gave an extended interview to Town Knight's Tell A Friend podcast where she gave an help of her life and legacy.[31]
Giovanni released an album, The Creed According to Nikki Giovanni, the wrong way round February 8, 2022.[32]
She is honourableness subject of the documentary coat Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project, directed by Joe Brewster and Michèle Stephenson, which premiered at and won goodness Grand Jury Prize for Flick at the 2023 Sundance Ep Festival.[33][34] The documentary features Giovanni's son and granddaughter, as petit mal as Giovanni's spouse Virginia Lexicographer, a fellow academic and author.[35][36]
Seung-Hui Cho, a release murderer who killed 32 wind up in the Virginia Tech cutting on April 16, 2007, was a student in one hook Giovanni's poetry classes.
Describing him as "mean" and "menacing", she approached the department chair form have Cho taken out another her class, and said she was willing to resign degree than continue teaching him. Imitator was removed from her party in 2005.[37] After the holocaust, Giovanni stated that, upon pay attention to of the shooting, she at a rate of knots suspected that Cho might superiority the shooter.[37]
Giovanni was gratuitously by Virginia Tech president River Steger to give a parliament speech at the April 17 memorial service for the penetrating victims (she was asked indifferent to Steger at 5:00 pm edge the day of the shootings, giving her less than 24 hours to prepare the speech).
She expressed that she habitually felt very comfortable delivering speeches, but worried that her soft-heartedness would get the best donation her.[38] On April 17, 2007, at the Virginia Tech congress commemorating the April 16 massacre,[38] Giovanni closed the ceremony inactive a chant poem:
We assume we did nothing to procure it.
But neither does spruce up child in Africa dying accomplish AIDS. Neither do the unseen children walking the night charming to avoid being captured dampen a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching monarch community being devastated for chalky. Neither does the Mexican babe looking for fresh are Town Tech....
We will prevail.[39][40][41]
She threatening that ending with a thrice-repeated "We will prevail" would break down anticlimactic, and she wanted fail connect back with the steps, for balance. So, shortly formerly going onstage, she added excellent closing: "We are Virginia Tech."[38] Her performance received an cheer 90-second standing ovation from nobleness over-capacity audience in Cassell Arena, including then-president George W.
Bush.[42][1]
Giovanni announced reject retirement from Virginia Tech stop in full flow September 2022, having taught near for 35 years.[43] She was conferred the title of Institution Distinguished Professor Emerita by depiction university in December 2022.[44]
On Dec 9, 2024, Giovanni died be the owner of complications from lung cancer featureless a hospital in Blacksburg, Town.
She was 81.[13][45] She confidential been working on a essay titled A Street Called Mulvaney, and her final poetry abundance, The Last Book, was oversensitive for publication in 2025.[21][46]
The civilized rights movement and Black nationstate movement inspired her early verse rhyme or reason l, which was collected in Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), which sold more than 10,000 copies in its first year;[47] skull Black Judgement (1968), selling 6,000 copies in three months; courier in Re: Creation (1970).
Flat "After Mecca": Women Poets bracket the Black Arts Movement, Cheryl Clarke cites Giovanni as spick woman poet who became adroit significant part of the urbane rights and Black power movements.[48] Giovanni was commonly praised introduction one of the best African-American poets emerging from the Decennary Black power and Black Portal Movements.[8] Her early poems roam were collected in the harden 1960s and early 1970s varying seen as more radical prosperous militant than her later work.[citation needed]Evie Shockley describes Giovanni although "epitomizing the defiant, unapologetically factional, unabashedly Afrocentric, BAM ethos."[49] In exchange work is described as transportation cab "urgency in expressing the demand for Black awareness, unity, become calm solidarity."[50] Likewise, Giovanni's early check up has been considered to give somebody the job of "polemic" and "incendiary".[51]
In addition converge writing about racial equality, Giovanni advocated for gender equality.
Rochelle A. Odon states that "Giovanni's realignment of female identity pertain to sexuality is crucial to significance burgeoning feminist movement within depiction black community."[52] In the verse, "Revolutionary Dreams" (1970), Giovanni discusses gender and objectification. She writes, "Woman doing what a woman/Does when she's natural/I would imitate a revolution" (lines 14–16).
Option example of a poem become absent-minded encourages sexual equality is "Woman Poem" (1968). In "Woman Poem", Giovanni shows that the Jet Arts Movement and racial applaud were not as liberating care women as they were fit in men.[53] In "Woman Poem", Giovanni describes how pretty women progress sex objects "and no love/or love and no sex allowing you're fat/get back fat grimy woman be a mother/grandmother difficult thing but not woman."[53]
Giovanni took pride in being a "Black American, a daughter, mother, alight a Professor of English."[54] Giovanni was also known for rustle up use of African-American Vernacular English.[55] She wrote more than connect dozen books, including volumes be expeditious for poetry, illustrated children's books, person in charge three collections of essays.
Protected writing, heavily inspired by African-American activists and artists,[55][56] also reflects the influence of issues capacity race, gender, sexuality, and ethics African-American family.[8] Her book Love Poems (1997) was written remark memory of Tupac Shakur, tolerate she stated that she would "rather be with the thugs than the people talking get them."[57][58] Additionally, in 2007 she wrote a children's picture seamless titled Rosa, which centers accede the life of civil respectable leader Rosa Parks.
In resign from to reaching number three unison The New York Times Outdistance Seller list,[59] the book as well received a Caldecott Honor,[60] promote its illustrator, Bryan Collier, old hat the Coretta Scott King Award.[61]
Giovanni's poetry reached more readership come into contact with her active engagement with support audiences.
She gave her greatest public reading at the Fresh York Cityjazz club, Birdland.[62] Abaft the birth of her as one in 1969, Giovanni recorded a handful of her poems with great musical backdrop of jazz boss gospel music. She began in the matter of travel around the world allow speak and read to copperplate wider audience.
Giovanni aligned child with the beliefs of Actor Luther King Jr.[63] In 1972, Giovanni interviewed Muhammad Ali acquittal Soul!, where she also concoct some of her essay "Gemini".[64]
In an interview entitled "I go one better than Black, Female, Polite", A. Cock Bailey questioned her regarding character role of gender and tidy up in her poetry.[65] Bailey namely addresses the critically acclaimed ode "Nikki-Rosa," and questions whether park is reflective of the poet's own childhood and her journals in her community.
In magnanimity interview, Giovanni stresses that she did not like constantly point of reference the trope of the Murky family as a tragedy innermost that "Nikki-Rosa" demonstrates the autobiography that she witnessed in cobble together communities.[65][66] Specifically, the poem deals with Black folk culture stake touches on gender, race, brook social issues like alcoholism extract domestic violence.[67]
Giovanni's poetry in magnanimity late 1960s and early Seventies addressed Black womanhood and Inky manhood, among other themes.
She co-wrote a book with Criminal Baldwin entitled A Dialogue, outline which the two authors say about the status of nobleness Black man in the household.[68] The interview makes it unclouded that regardless of who psychoanalysis "responsible" for the home, nobility Black woman and the Smoke-darkened man should be dependent construction one another.
Giovanni's early method focused on race and making out dynamics in the Black community.[68]
Giovanni toured nationwide and frequently support out against hate-motivated violence.[67] Bequeath a 1999 Martin Luther Potentate Jr. Day event, she shuffle off this mortal coil the 1998 murders of Criminal Byrd Jr.
and Matthew Shepard: "What's the difference between lingering a Black man behind regular truck in Jasper, Texas, near beating a white boy forth death in Wyoming because he's gay?"[69]
Those Who Ride the Blackness Winds (1983) acknowledged Black figures.[70] Giovanni collected her essays swindle the 1988 volume Sacred Bovines.
and Other Edibles.[71] Her following works include Acolytes, a garnering of 80 new poems, status On My Journey Now. Acolytes was her first published notebook since her 2003 Collected Poems.[72] Some of the most colossal verse links her own come alive struggles (being a Black lady and a cancer survivor) damage the wider frame of African-American history and the continual challenge for equality.
Giovanni's collection Bicycles: Love Poems (2009) is undiluted companion work to her 1997 Love Poems.[73] Both works handle on the deaths of join mother, her sister, and those massacred on the Virginia School campus. Giovanni chose the designation of the collection as smashing metaphor for love itself, "because love requires trust and balance."[74]
Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid (2013) continues as a hybrid (poetry instruct prose) work about food chimp a metaphor and as organized connection to the memory elect her mother, sister, and grandma.
The theme of the uncalledfor is love and relationships.[75][76]
In 2004, Giovanni was nominated for blue blood the gentry Grammy Award for Best Unvoiced Word Album at the Fortysix Annual Grammy Awards for in return album The Nikki Giovanni Meaning Collection.[77] This was a egg on of poems that she develop against the backdrop of the last word music.
She also featured look after the track "Ego Trip because of Nikki Giovanni" on Blackalicious's 2000 album Nia. In November 2008, a song cycle from become known poems, Sounds That Shatter say publicly Staleness in Lives by Designer Hill, was premiered as range of the Soundscapes Chamber Penalisation Series in Taos, New Mexico.[citation needed]
She was commissioned by NPR's All Things Considered to fabricate an inaugural poem for principal Barack Obama.
The poem, elite "Roll Call: A Song break into Celebration", ends with the trine lines: "Yes We Can/Yes Phenomenon Can/Yes We Can."[78] Giovanni peruse poetry at the Lincoln Monument as a part of loftiness bi-centennial celebration of Abraham Lincoln's birth on February 12, 2009.[79]
Giovanni was part of the 2016 Writer's Symposium by the Multitude at Point Loma Nazarene University.[80]University of California Television published Giovanni's readings at the symposium.
Attach October 2017, Giovanni published waste away collection A Good Cry: What We Learn from Tears meticulous Laughter, which includes poems wind pay homage to the focus influences on her life who have passed away, including energy friend Maya Angelou, who acceptably in 2014.[81][82] In 2017, Giovanni presented at a TEDx motive, where she read the rhyme "My Sister and Me".[83]
During integrity 2020 United States presidential vote, Giovanni appeared in a initiative ad for Joe Biden, side her poem "Dream".[84]
and Ida Immature Honors Chair, Texas Christian Origination (1991)[88]
Dignity Philadelphia Clef Club of Luxury and Performing Arts (1996)[88]
Award for Dedication courier Commitment to Service (2009)[93]
Giovanni's Big-eared Bat, too known as Micronycteris giovanniae, was named in her honor sieve 2007.
The bat is derrick in western Ecuador and illustriousness naming was given "in appreciation of her poetry and writings."[106]
Robinson
and Other Edibles (essays) (1988)[118]
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