Nikki Giovanni’s Poetry of History and Love

I'm here/And if I mist/On emotional soil/A weed will/Grow//Make Me Rain//Let me be a part/Of this needed change - "Biography" (2020)

On December 9, 2024, the literary world—and the world at large—lost the towering presence of Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. after a long battle with lung cancer. She was a poet, an educator, and an activist who achieved wide acclaim and recognition throughout a public career that spanned more than fifty years. Working across genres but primarily known for her poetry, her writing was celebrated for its political fierceness, her unapologetic embrace of her identity as a Black woman, and her poetic engagement with so-called “low” pop culture. The rare modern poet who was as popular with mainstream audiences as she was revered by the literati, Giovanni was a singular cultural figure whose impact as a writer and human being touched fields as disparate as space travel and chiropterology (the study of bats). 

Born in Knoxville, Tennessee on June 7, 1943, Giovanni spent her childhood bouncing around Ohio before returning to Tennessee for high school and enrolling at Fisk University in Nashville. A voracious reader from an early age, she was always quick to undermine preconceived notions about her upbringing. In “Nikki-Rosa” (1968), she warns a hypothetical future biographer to avoid stereotypical racist representations of poverty and hone in on joy instead: “I really hope no white person ever has cause/to write about me/because they never understand/Black love is Black wealth and they’ll/probably talk about my hard childhood/and never understand that/all the while I was quite happy."

Her disregard for institutional rules and activist inclinations rose to the forefront early, as she was briefly expelled from her university for butting heads with the administration before returning and getting involved with the campus chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She began writing poetry to process her grief over the death of her beloved grandmother, and a constant thread throughout her life was the desire to make her ancestors proud. After she moved to New York City to pursue an MFA degree, she began her long career as an educator and became associated with the Black Arts Movement (BAM) alongside contemporaries including Amiri Baraka, Audre Lorde, Maya Angelou, and Gwendolyn Brooks. 

These were the most openly politically radical militant years of her life, a period where Giovanni’s work began actively engaging with history and the civil rights and Black power movements—often with groundbreaking use of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE). Never one to back down from a fight or limit herself, her writing covered wide-ranging topics and took stances on both politics and social norms. While poems like "A Historical Footnote to Consider Only When All Else Fails" (1968) openly criticized President Lyndon B Johnson and called for revolution, "The Laws of Motion" (1970) was just as much about women's equality and subverting traditional gender roles. And while she did indeed write poems of righteous civic anger, her work also thrummed with optimism and playfulness. In "Knoxville, Tennessee" (1970), Giovanni paints a bucolic picture of Black utopia replete with vivid culinary details before affirming the universal human need for love, peace, and safety: "you can eat fresh corn/from daddy's garden/and okra/and greens/and cabbage/and lots of/barbecue/and buttermilk/and homemade ice-cream/at the church picnic....you go to the mountains with/your grandmother/and go barefooted/and be warm/all the time/not only when you go to bed/and sleep."

In 1970 Giovanni founded her own publishing company, and in that same decade made appearances on television programs including Soul! and The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson that helped rocket her into the public consciousness. Her collection of essays "Gemini" was nominated for the National Book Award in 1973, the first of countless accolades including seven NAACP Image Awards, the Langston Hughes Medal, a Grammy nomination, the Caldecott Honor Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, and 27 honorary degrees. In 1987 she joined her wife Ginny Fowler and began teaching at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, a professorship that she would hold until her retirement in 2022. She wrote children's books, collaborated with jazz and gospel musicians, and spoke out against violent hate of all kinds. After the tragic 2007 Virginia Tech mass shooting, she gave an emotional speech at the memorial service that brought the community together in a time of trauma. This was something that Giovanni did throughout her life—even in the darkest historical moments, she found ways to be hopeful and forward-looking with incisiveness, strength, and care.

After Giovanni's passing, the acclaimed poet and academic Camille Dungy took to social media to examine her relationship with the legendary writer’s work and legacy. "I first met Nikki Giovanni when I was about 10 years old. My parents took me to one of her readings because they knew I needed to know that writers could be living breathing beautiful Black people, not just dead white men on dull pages... She’s the reason I learned to care about American history. Her poetry helped me understand the ways the long and recent past directly set the course for the present and the future. She made the personal collective and she gave the collective power." 

When Dungy grew up and embarked on her own creative career, Giovanni's influence developed into tangible support for the up-and-coming writer. Giovanni chose one of Dungy's poems for an anthology of Black poets and even wrote an endorsement for her first full collection. Speaking with Facing History, Dungy said: "One of the things I am interested in [about] Giovanni's work is how much of it is at its core love poetry. Love for family, for individuals, for her people. She was saucy and often salty, but she fundamentally believed in the power and importance of love. I think she's partly so salty because self love was also important to her, and she knew it was important to make space for herself."

From her writing to her activism and her diverse interests, Giovanni's life’s work was at its core poetry—of pride, empowerment, and history—and always humming with love, friendship, and delight. She left a lasting impact on everyone she touched, from her students to her adoring audience to the next generation of writers and activists. She taught us that while the world may push us around, there’s beauty in the pushing back. As she wrote in “Mothers” (1972): “we must learn/to bear the pleasures/as we have borne the pains.”