Nikki Giovanni: An Appreciation of the Esteemed Poet
By Nancy Snyder | On March 14, 2025 | Comments (0)
Some years before her death, renowned poet, professor, and activist Nikki Giovanni wrote, “I hope I die warmed by the life I tried to live.”
Giovanni’s hope and vision have been realized. When she passed away on December 9, 2024, she was surrounded by the boundless love of her wife, Virginia Fowler, her son Thomas, and her granddaughter Kai.
Nikki Giovanni was eighty-one years old when she died of complications from cancer, her third diagnosis of the disease. Despite this tremendous physical challenge, Ms. Giovanni continued to write, speak, teach, and publish throughout the last decade of her life.
For nearly sixty years, Giovanni was the quintessential people’s poet. She used deceptively simple language to explore the complexities at the intersection of race, politics, gender, love, loneliness, and creativity.
Giovanni’s friend and fellow poet and author Renee Watson described her as “one of the cultural icons and of the Black Arts and Civil Rights movements. She became friends with Rosa Parks, Aretha Franklin, James Baldwin, Nina Simone, and Muhammad Ali, and inspired generations of students, artists, activists, musicians, scholars and human beings, young and old.”
A turbulent early life
Born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni Jr., her parents were Yolande (Watson) Giovanni and Jones Giovanni, on June 7, 1943. Her older sister, Gary Ann, nicknamed her Nikki. Shortly after she was born, the family moved to Cincinnati, Ohio, where her parents worked as grade school teachers.
The Giovanni home was turbulent. Her father abused her mother physically and psychologically. Nikki grew to despise her father’s violence and her mother’s acceptance of the situation.
When she was fifteen, Giovanni decided to save herself and moved into her grandparents’ home in Knoxville, Tennessee. She attended Austin High School, where her grandfather taught Latin, and graduated early.
University studies
Her next stop was Fisk University (an HBCU) in Nashville, Tennessee. Giovanni later commented that Fisk, with its sorority sisters dominating the campus in the early 1960s, was “an odd fit.” The Women’s Dean was especially punitive towards her. When she left campus overnight for Thanksgiving break without permission, she was expelled from the university.
A year later, after Giovanni had returned to Knoxville and worked in a local Walgreens. The new Dean of Women from Fisk University, Blanche McConnell Cowan, went to Knoxville and urged her to return to her studies. Giovanni agreed. She helped to rebuild Fisk University’s chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and began to study with John Oliver Killens, a founder of the Harlem Writers World. She graduated with honors in 1967.
. . . . . . . . . . .
Learn more about Nikki Giovanni
. . . . . . . . . . .
Becoming a poet, teacher writer, mother & partner
Giovanni attended the University of Pennsylvania’s School for Social Work for a brief time, but realized that her calling to write was all-consuming. Shortly after she graduated from Fisk, her grandmother, Louvenia Watson, passed away and Giovanni began to write poetry to cope with her grief.
For the next several years, Giovanni wrote and was a frequent guest on Soul!, the PBS Black culture program. She had a son in 1969 and ignored comments regarding her unmarried status. She explained her decision to Ebony magazine with great emphasis:
“I had a baby at 25 because I wanted to have a baby and I could afford to have a baby. I didn’t get married I didn’t want to get married and I could afford not to get married.”
Giovanni held teaching positions at Rutgers University and Queens College until 1987, when Virginia Fowler recruited her to be a visiting professor at Virginia Tech University. Giovanni earned tenure, and she and Ms. Fowler became a couple.
Poetry as truth-telling
Giovanni’s poetry was naturally averse to pretension and artifice. She perceived poetry as a vehicle for truth-telling, dispelling the myths perpetuating an inequitable, racist society. One of her early poems, “Ego-Tripping,” which has been performed for generations by young African American women, exudes pride and power in recognizing themselves in their ancestors:
Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why)
I was born in the congo
I walked in the fertile crescent and built
The sphinx
I designed a pyramid is tough that a star
That glows every one hundred years falls
Into the center giving divine perfect light
I am bad.
Read the full poem here.
In the 1970s, Giovanni wrote poetry that explored nature, intimacy, beauty, and the comforts of home:
My House (an excerpt; this is the third verse)
I mean it’s my house
And I want to fry pork chops
And bake sweet potatoes
And call them yams
Cause I run the kitchen
And I can stand the heat
Read the full poem here.
Giovanni delighted her readers with unexpected bursts of joy, such as the self-deprecating worries of one lover — feeling undeserving of the love given by their new lover:
I Take Master Card
I’ve heard all the stories
‘bout how you don’t deserve me
‘cause I’m so strong and beautiful
And wonderful and you could
never live up to what you know I should have
I want you to know
I take Master Card
Read the full poem here.
. . . . . . . . . . .
. . . . . . . . . . .
Nikki Giovanni in a live talk; honoring Tupac
Attending a live talk by Nikki Giovanni was one of the most motivational gifts anyone could receive. As Maya Angelou famously remarked, what you remember about people is how they made you feel. Giovanni had a gift for making people feel good.
Giovanni had a gift for connecting with her audience (students were a particular favorite of hers), leaving them with confidence that they too, could write poetry that could change their lives — and perhaps even the world.
I was fortunate to be in an audience of Giovanni’s in November 1996. The San Francisco Book Festival hosted her as one of their major speakers; living in San Francisco then, I was able to attend and experience her magic. She spent some time talking about the murder of rapper Tupac Shakur (which occurred three months before this gathering), angry that many young Black men would not live to reach maturity; still, she expressed mood of moving forward. She had the audience actively engaged and absorbing every word without descending into collective despair.
In honor of Tupac, THUG LIFE, the tattoo that Tupac Shakur had emblazoned on his chest, was adapted to a much smaller size and tattooed on Ms. Giovanni’s wrist. Ms. Giovanni stated that she would “rather be with the thugs than the people talking about them.” In 1997, Giovanni published her book Love Poems, a remembrance of Tupac. That night, the audience heard part of the poem All Eyes on U:
All Eyes on U (for 2Pac Shakur 1971-1996)
if those who lived by lies died by lies there would be nobody on wall street
In executive suites in academic offices instructing the young
don’t tell me he got what he deserved he deserved a chariot and
The accolades of a grateful people
he deserved his life
Read the rest of the poem here.
Nikki Giovanni speaking at Emory University, 2008
Photo by Brett Weinstein, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
. . . . . . . . . .
The legacy of Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni wrote thirty books in her lifetime: poetry, prose, and children’s books. Although she never sought accolades, she was honored to accept the NAACP Image Award, the Langston Hughes Medal, the Caldecott Medal, and the Children’s Book Award. She held twenty-seven honorary degrees from various colleges and universities, and was given the key to more than two dozen American cities.
Perhaps Giovanni’s most unusual recognition was by scientist Robert James Baker, a devoted fan who named a species of a South American bat after her: the Micronycteris giovanniae.
Giovanni retired from Virginia Tech in 2022 and, despite her health challenges, wrote until the end of her life. The Last Book, her fittingly titled final poetry collection, will be published in late 2025.
Poet Renee Watson, a close friend of Giovanni’s, wrote a praise poem for Giovanni’s eightieth birthday. It encapsulates her place in history and the arts:
Ever year on the seventh of June
Heaven throws a birthday party
for Nikki.
Coretta is there. She’s protective of Aiyana and Hadiya.
She introduces them to Sandra and Breonna, keeps them close.
And surely Harriet and Fannie and Rosa are swapping stories of how
They got over.
And Lucille and Gwendolyn and Margaret recite sonnets, teach them to Betty.
And Toni and Maya are writing jubilees for the angels to sing.
Read more about this poem (along with Watson’s conversation with Nikki Giovanni here)
. . . . . . . . .
Further reading and sources
- Poetry Foundation
- Nikki Giovanni’s personal website
- Remembering the Fierce and Lyrical Voice of Nikki Giovanni (video)
- In Memoriam: Nikki Giovanni
- Nikki Giovanni, Poet Who Wrote of Black Joy
Contributed by Nancy Snyder, who retired from the City and County of San Francisco and as a union officer for SEIU Local 1021/790. She writes about books and women writers to understand the world and her place in it.
Leave a Reply