Nikki Giovanni, an acclaimed poet and fierce activist, has handed away Monday on the age of 81. At her core, Giovanni needed everybody to know being unapologetically Black permits all of us to be proud. Giovanni is the voice of Black energy.
Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on June 7, 1943. In accordance with her web site, she grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. Nonetheless, she and her sister would return to Knoxville every summer season to go to their grandparents. Nikki graduated with honors in historical past from her grandfather’s alma mater, Fisk College.
Giovanni would publish her first poetry assortment, “Black Feeling Black Discuss”, in 1968. Giovanni would go turn out to be a pillar of of the Black Arts and Civil Rights Actions. She would later write “Spin a Comfortable Black Tune” (1971) and “Ego-Tripping and Different Poems for Younger Folks” (1973), poems and books that spoke to the youth and their points.
Giovanni would later turn out to be a professor at Virginia Tech, the place she taught from 1987 by 2022. She continued to write down poetry. Giovanni obtained quite a few awards, together with the inaugural Rosa L. Parks Girl of Braveness Award, the American E-book Award, the Langston Hughes Award, the Virginia Governor’s Award for the Arts, and the Emily Couric Management Award. She can also be a seven-time recipient of the NAACP Picture Award.
Nikki additionally self-narrated an album, “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Assortment”. It was nominated for the Spoken Phrase GRAMMY on the forty sixth Grammy Awards in 2004.
Giovanni additionally obtained 27 honorary levels and is an honorary member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Integrated.
Giovanni is survived by her spouse, Virginia Fowler, her son Thomas, her granddaughter, Kai, two cousins, Haynes Ford and Allison (Pat) Ragan, and a nephew Christopher Black.
She wrote in her anthology “The Collected Poetry, 1968-1998,” these phrases that have been quintessential to her mission:
“I hope i die
warmed
by the life that i attempted
to dwell.”
Could her legacy proceed to be a blessing.
