Poet and civil rights activist Nikki Giovanni, a outstanding determine in the course of the Black Arts Motion within the Nineteen Sixties and ‘70s who was dubbed “the Princess of Black Poetry,” has died. She was 81.
Giovanni died “peacefully” Monday with life partner Virginia “Ginney” Fowler by her side, her friend and author Renée Watson said Tuesday in a statement to The Times. She had recently been diagnosed with cancer for the third time, Watson said.
“We will forever feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our dear cousin,” Giovanni’s cousin Allison “Pat” Ragan added in an announcement on behalf of the household.
Watson and author-poet Kwame Alexander stated that they, together with with household and shut associates, lately sat by Giovanni’s aspect “chatting about how much we learned about living from her, about how lucky we have been to have Nikki guide us, teach us, love us.”
“We will forever be grateful for the unconditional time she gave to us, to all her literary children across the writerly world,” Alexander stated within the assertion.
Giovanni, born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr., used her voice as a poet to handle problems with Black identification and Black liberation. She was greatest recognized for her outspoken advocacy and her charismatic supply and was a pal of fellow wordsmiths Maya Angelou, Sonia Sanchez, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin and Toni Morrison. She additionally grew to become pleasant with different cultural iconoclasts, together with Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Muhammad Ali.
“My dream was not to publish or to even be a writer: my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of. I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does,” Giovanni wrote on her web site.
Named after her mom, Giovanni was born June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn. She had an older sister, Gary Ann. Her household later moved north, and he or she spent most of her childhood in Cincinnati — a interval she described in her writing as turbulent as a result of her father was bodily abusive to her mom.
Giovanni returned to Nashville in 1961 to attend Fisk, a traditionally Black college, the place she studied historical past. A voracious reader since girlhood, she was admitted early, earlier than she completed highschool. Giovanni edited the college’s literary journal and helped begin the campus department of the Scholar Non-Violent Coordinating Committee, the Related Press stated.
However she was expelled after only one semester due to her contentious relationship with one of many the varsity’s deans as a consequence of her political activism and opposition to the varsity’s stern guidelines and curfew. Three years later, she re-enrolled beneath a brand new dean, who agreed to wipe her document clear.
She accomplished her diploma in 1967 and moved again to Cincinnati, the place she edited a neighborhood artwork journal and arranged Cincinnati’s first Black Arts Competition.
In 1968, she self-published her first quantity of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk / Black Judgement.” Her poems grew out of her emotions concerning the assassinations of civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr., Medgar Evers and Malcolm X and the demise of her grandmother.
In considered one of Giovanni’s early poems, “Reflections on April 4, 1968,” marking the day King was assassinated, she wrote, “What can I, a poor Black woman, do to destroy America? This / is a question, with appropriate variations, being asked in every / Black heart.” Her different works, together with “A Short Essay of Affirmation Explaining Why,” “Of Liberation” and “A Litany for Peppe,” had been described by the AP as militant calls to overthrow white energy.
Along with her grownup poetry, she launched two movies, 13 youngsters’s poetry books and 10 recordings, together with her Grammy-nominated “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection.” She was a frequent visitor on the PBS speak present “Soul.” A movie about her life, “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” received the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for documentary on the Sundance Movie Competition in January 2023. The movie makes use of vérité and archival pictures to present audiences a glimpse into Giovanni’s thoughts.
“A poem is not so much read as navigated,” Giovanni wrote in her in 2013 e book “Chasing Utopia.” “We go from point to point discovering a new horizon, a shift of light or laughter, an exhilaration of newness that we had missed before. Even familiar, or perhaps especially familiar, poems bring the excitement of first nighters, first encounters, first love … when viewed and reviewed.”
After educating at a number of universities domestically and visitor lecturing overseas, she was recruited by an English professor named Virginia Fowler to show inventive writing at Virginia Tech.
“We are deeply saddened to learn of Nikki Giovanni’s passing,” the college stated Tuesday on X (previously Twitter). “Nikki will be remembered not only as an acclaimed poet and activist but also for the legendary impact she made during her 35 years at Virginia Tech.”
Nikki Giovanni recites her poem “We Are Virginia Tech” in the course of the Could 2007 English division commencement ceremony on the campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Va.
(Steve Helber / Related Press)
In 2007, that college grew to become the location of probably the most lethal shootings in U.S. historical past, with 32 folks killed and 17 injured on campus. The gunman — who was additionally killed — was a former pupil of Giovanni’s, and he or she had alerted college authorities beforehand about his troubling conduct in her class. Giovanni, a former inventive writing teacher, stated she took a few of his writing to the varsity’s dean and instructed the dean that she may now not train him.
After the tragedy, she was instrumental in rallying folks and restoring a way of morale to a traumatized pupil physique.
“I couldn’t allow him to destroy my class,” she instructed The Instances in 2007. She delivered a part of the convocation handle at commencement that faculty 12 months to roaring applause.
“We will prevail! / We will prevail! / We will prevail! / We are Virginia Tech,” she stated on the ceremony.
As her partner, Fowler has turn out to be an skilled and keeper of Giovanni’s work and legacy. In an interview with the Struggle and the Fiddle, Giovanni described how Fowler was an vital pillar of assist and that she was “so lucky to have found Ginny.”
“Her grandmother was the most important person to her,” Fowler stated. “Their home in Cincinnati wasn’t happy because Nikki discovered that she would have to leave or she would have to kill [her father]. She went to live with her grandmother. She asked if she could stay.”
As Giovanni lived, so she wrote. She broke with cultural norms and gave delivery to her solely little one, Thomas Watson Giovanni, in 1969, when she was 25 as a result of “wanted to have a baby and I could afford to have a baby.” She instructed Ebony journal that she didn’t wish to get married and “could afford not to get married.” In her 1971 prolonged autobiographical assertion, “Gemini,” she detailed her life rising up as a younger single mom, which was taboo on the time.
Nikki Giovanni seems on the 2015 unveiling of the U.S. Postal Service’s Maya Angelou Eternally Stamp in Washington, D.C.
(Jacquelyn Martin / Related Press)
“Her life is the life of Black people,” stated L. Lamar Wilson, who was mentored by Giovanni. “She documented it in every art form: film, television … from the 1940s to the present.” Wilson is now a printed poet and professor at Florida State College.
Wilson was a reporter and duplicate editor working on the Atlanta Journal-Structure when he made the case to report on Giovanni’s look within the metropolis in 2007. Throughout their interview, she stopped him and invited him to use to the inventive writing grasp’s program at Virginia Tech.
“Nikki changed the trajectory of my life. And I’m one of at least 25 people I could name to you who are very famous prominent writers who have the same story,” he stated. “She has mentored us, she has been our friend, she has been our surrogate mother when we needed it. She has been our disciplinarian when we needed it, cautioning us about the pitfalls and the pratfalls of the publishing industry and of academia.”
As an educator, Giovanni is crediting with serving to usher in a youthful era of Black writers.
Giovanni deliberate a celebration for “The Bluest Eye” creator Morrison earlier than the latter died in 2019. On the celebration, folks learn their favourite excerpts from her work, shifting Morrison to tears.
As a winner of seven NAACP awards and numerous extra accolades for her achievements in poetry — Giovanni helped up-and-coming writers.
“I think she’s proudest of having opened the door for a lot of future … writers who came after her. They were able to come after her because she had opened doors,” Fowler stated. “She is generous, she helps other people, she’s helped other artists, and that’s pretty unusual.”
In 2015, Instances columnist Sandy Banks interviewed Giovanni on the heels of the Black Lives Matter protests in Ferguson, Mo.
“I’m not a guru. I don’t have the answers,” Giovanni stated when Banks requested about steerage for younger writers. “Just trust your own voice. And keep exploring the things that are interesting to you.
“All I can do is be a good Nikki. All you can do is be you,” she stated.
Nikki Giovanni delivers closing remarks at a Virginia Tech convocation to honor victims of a mass taking pictures on the campus in 2007.
(Steve Helber / Related Press)
Longtime pal Joanne Gabbin — government director of Livid Flower, the nation’s first educational middle for Black poetry — believes Giovanni was proudest of her relationship together with her grandmother. “Family is very important. I think it goes all the way back to what her grandmother shared with her, what her grandmother taught her, the values that her grandmother instilled in her,” Gabbin instructed The Instances. “She had made a commitment to her grandmother that whatever she did, it would be excellent.”
In 2016, Gabbin and Giovanni, who had been associates for greater than 30 years, got a preview opening of the Nationwide Museum of African American Historical past and Tradition in Washington, D.C.
Gabbin stated that whereas touring the museum, Giovanni encountered a “huge kind of a portrait” of herself displayed within the exhibit, marked in historical past as a literary legend.
Giovanni is survived by Fowler; her son, Thomas; and her granddaughter, Kai.
Kayembe is a former Instances fellow. The Related Press contributed to this report.