Nikki Giovanni

Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni speaking at Emory 2008
Born	(1943-06-07) June 7, 1943 Knoxville, Tennessee
Occupation	writer, poet, activist
Nationality	United States
Period	1960s-present
www.nikki-giovanni.com

Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American writer, commentator, activist, and educator. She is currently a distinguished professor of English at Virginia Tech.

Life and work

Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, to Yolande Cornelia, Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. She grew up in Lincoln Heights, a suburb of Cincinnati, Ohio, and in 1960 began her studies at Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, her grandfather's alma mater. She graduated in 1967 with honors, receiving a B.A. in history. Afterward she went on to attend the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.

In 1969 Giovanni began teaching at Livingston College of Rutgers University, and since 1987, she has taught writing and literature at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor. She has received nineteen honorary doctorates and other awards, including "Woman of the Year" awards from three different magazines as well as the key to several different cities.^{[citation needed]} She is a member of the Order of the Eastern Star (PHA), and an Honorary Member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.

Giovanni ca. 1980

Giovanni taught the Virginia Tech shooter Seung-Hui Cho in a poetry class. She described him as "mean" and "menacing", when she approached the department chair to have Cho taken out of her class, and said she was willing to resign rather than continue teaching him. She stated that, upon hearing of the shooting, she immediately suspected that Cho might be the shooter. On April 16, 2007, at the Virginia Tech Convocation commemorating the April 16 Virginia Tech massacre, Giovanni closed the ceremony with a chant poem, intoning:

“

We know we did nothing to deserve it. But neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS. Neither do the invisible children walking the night awake to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory. Neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water...We are Virginia Tech...We will prevail.

”

On August 21, 2007, The Tennessean reported that Giovanni is returning to her alma mater as a distinguished visiting professor at Fisk University.

Writing

Nikki Giovanni (2007)

The civil rights and black power movements inspired her early poetry that was collected in Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967), Black Judgement (1968), and Re: Creation (1970). She has since written more than two dozen books, including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. Her writing has been heavily inspired by African-American activists and artists. Her book Love Poems (1997) was written in memory of Tupac Shakur and she has stated that she would "rather be with the thugs than the people who are complaining about them."

Giovanni tours nationwide and frequently speaks out against hate-motivated violence. At a 1999 Martin Luther King Day event, she recalled the 1998 murders of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard: "What's the difference between dragging a black man behind a truck in Jasper, Texas, and beating a white boy to death in Wyoming because he's gay?"

Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983) acknowledged black figures. Giovanni collected her essays in the 1988 volume Sacred Cows ... and Other Edibles. Some of her more recent works include Acolytes, a collection of eighty new poems, and On My Journey Now. Acolytes is her first published volume since her 2003 Collected Poems. It tones down the militant, edgy conscience for which Giovanni is known and portrays her softer, more nostalgic side. The work is a celebration of love and recollection directed at friends and loved ones and it recalls memories of nature, theater, and the glories of children. However, Giovanni's fiery persona still remains a constant undercurrent in Acolytes, as some of the most serious verse link her own life struggles (being a black woman and a cancer survivor) to the wider frame of African-American history and the continual fight for equality.

Giovanni's collection, Bicycles: Love Poems (2009), is a companion work to her 1997 Love Poems. They touch on the deaths of both her mother and her sister, as well as the massacre on the Virginia Tech campus. Giovanni chose the title of the collection as a metaphor for love itself, "because love requires trust and balance."^{[citation needed]} The work portrays her life as it spins out of control and love, which she prescribes as the antidote. The poems come alive with her warmth and authenticity, a stark foil to the militant, edgy work that laid a path towards becoming one of the prominent voices of the black community.

In 2004, Giovanni was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards for her album The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. She also featured on the track "Ego Trip By Nikki Giovanni" on Blackalicious's 2000 album Nia. In November 2008, a song cycle of her poems, Sounds That Shatter the Staleness in Lives by Adam Hill, was premiered as part of the Soundscapes Chamber Music Series in Taos, New Mexico.

She was commissioned by National Public Radio's All Things Considered to create an inaugural poem for President Barack Obama. Giovanni read poetry at the Lincoln Memorial as a part of the bicentennial celebration of Lincoln's birth on February 12, 2009.

Works

Poetry collections

• Black Feeling, Black Talk (1967
• Black Judgement (1968)
• Re: Creation (1970)
• My House (1972)
• The Women and The Men (1975)
• Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (1978)
• Woman (1978)
• Those Who Ride The Night Winds (1983)
• Knoxville, Tennessee (1994)
• The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996)
• Love Poems (1997)
• Blues: For All the Changes (1999)
• Quilting the Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Not Quite Poems (2002)
• The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
• The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (2003)
• Acolytes (2007)
• Bicycles: Love Poems (2009) (William Morrow)
• 100 Best African American Poems (2010) [editor] (Sourcebooks MediaFusion)'

Co-authored

• A Dialogue with James Baldwin (1973)
• Rosa with Bryan Collier (2005)
• Harlem Stomp!: A Cultural History of the Harlem Renaissance with Laban Carrick (2009)

Children's books

• Spin a Soft Black Song (1971)
• Ego-Tripping and Other Poems For Young People (1973)
• Vacation Time: Poems for Children (1980)
  • The Genie in The Jar (1996)
• The Sun Is So Quiet (1996)
• The Girls in the Circle (Just for You!) (2004)
• Poetry Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat (2005) [advisory editor] (Sourcebooks)
• Lincoln and Douglass: An American Friendship (2008)
• Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat (2008) (Sourcebooks)
• The Grasshopper's Song: An Aesop's Fable (2008)

Discography

• Truth Is On Its Way (Right On Records, 1976)
• The Reason I Like Chocolate (Folkways Records, 1976)
• Legacies: The Poetry of Nikki Giovanni (Folkways, 1976)
• Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day (Folkways, 1978)
• Every Tone A Testimony (Smithsonian Folkways, 2001)

External links

• Giovanni's website
• Profile at Lavin
• Works by or about Nikki Giovanni in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• Profile and poems of Nikki Giovanni at the Poetry Foundation.
• Giovanni Discography at Smithsonian Folkways
• Poems, Essays and Biography for Nikki Giovanni
• "Interview with poet Nikki Giovanni" for the WGBH series Say Brother
• Booknotes interview with Giovanni on The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998, February 8, 2004.
• Pin His Ear to the Wisdom Post Nikki Giovanni named the first Coretta Scott King Fellow, video, April 3, 2009
• "We are Virginia Tech" - convocation poem read by Giovanni
  • MSNBC video
  • MP3 Audio
• Amy Goodman sits down with activist, poet and scholar Nikki Giovanni at Virginia Tech, October 3, 2012 on Democracy Now!