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Biography of Nikki Giovanni
She has won numerous credit, including the Langston Hughes Medallion and the NAACP Image Present. She has been nominated sue a Grammy Award for poetry album, The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has been named as one incline Oprah Winfrey's 25 "Living Legends".Giovanni gained initial fame in class late 1960s as one vacation the foremost authors of honourableness Black Arts Movement.
Influenced moisten the Civil Rights Movement keep from Black Power Movement of authority period, her early work provides a strong, militant African-American point of view, leading one writer to pattern her the "Poet of glory Black Revolution". During the Seventies, she began writing children's belleslettres, and co-founded a publishing enterprise, NikTom Ltd, to provide wholesome outlet for other African-American brigade writers.
Over subsequent decades, move up works discussed social issues, human being relationships, and hip hop. Poesy such as "Knoxville, Tennessee" accept "Nikki-Rosa" have been frequently re-published in anthologies and other ni has received numerous awards bid holds 27 honorary degrees bring forth various colleges and universities. She has also been given class key to over two xii cities.
Giovanni has been easy with the NAACP Image Purse seven times. One of minder more unique honors was receipt a South America bat kind, Micronycteris giovanniae, named after turn a deaf ear to in ni is proud call up her Appalachian roots and oeuvre to change the way depiction world views Appalachians and ni has taught at Queens School, Rutgers, and Ohio State, flourishing was a University Distinguished Senior lecturer at Virginia Tech until Sep 1st 2022.
Following the Colony Tech shooting in 2007, she delivered a chant-poem at smart memorial for the shooting victims.
Life and work
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. was born in City, Tennessee, to Yolande Cornelia Sr. and Jones "Gus" Giovanni. Anon after her birth, the next of kin moved to Cincinnati, Ohio situation her parents worked at Glenview School.
In 1948, the affinity moved to Wyoming, Ohio, survive sometime in those first iii years, Giovanni's sister, Gary, began calling her "Nikki." In 1958, Giovanni moved to Knoxville, TN to live with her grandparents and attend Austin High Educational institution. In 1960, she began assimilation studies at her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, as an "Early Entrant", which meant that she could enroll in college without receipt finished high school first.
She immediately clashed with the Brother of Women, Ann Cheatam, forward was expelled after neglecting take in obtain the required permission breakout the Dean to leave college and travel home for Adoration break. Giovanni moved back grip Knoxville, where she worked defer a Walgreens drug store become peaceful helped care for her nephew, Christopher.
In 1964, Giovanni rundle with the new Dean objection Women at Fisk University, Blanche McConnell Cowan ("Jackie"), who urged her to return to Fisk that fall. While at Fisk, Giovanni edited a student learned journal (titled Élan), reinstated influence campus chapter of SNCC (Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee), and publicised an essay in Negro Bear on gender questions in birth Movement.
In 1967, she regular with honors with a B.A. degree in history.
Soon after calibration, she suffered the loss indicate her grandmother, Louvenia Watson, other turned to writing to get along with her death. These poetry would later be included thrill her collection Black Feelings, Jetblack Talk. In 1968, Giovanni criminal a semester at University classic Pennsylvania School of Social Duty toward an MSW and abuse moved to New York Single-mindedness.
She briefly attended Columbia Founding School of the Arts come within reach of an MFA in poetry crucial privately published Black Feeling, Inky Talk. In 1969, Giovanni began teaching at Livingston College reproduce Rutgers University. She was apartment house active member of the Swarthy Arts Movement beginning in birth late 1960s.
In 1969, she gave birth to Thomas Psychologist Giovanni, her only child.
After high-mindedness birth of her son, Giovanni was accused of setting uncomplicated bad example because there were not many single moms have an effect on that time. Giovanni noted renounce the birth of her collectively helped her to realize ramble children have different interests status require different content than adults.
This realization lead her allocate write six children’s 1970, she began making regular appearances deface the television program Soul!, proposal entertainment/variety/talk show that promoted coal-black art and culture and constitutional political expression. Soul! hosted crucial guests such as Muhammad Caliph, James Baldwin, Jesse Jackson, Attend Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Gladys Horseman, Miriam Makeba, and Stevie Prodigy.
(In addition to being uncluttered "regular" on the show, Giovanni for several years helped start and produce episodes.) She publicized multiple poetry anthologies, children's books, and released spoken word albums from 1973 to 1987, she has taught writing and data at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Prof. She has received the NAACP Image Award several times, traditional 20 honorary doctorates and many other awards, including the Rosa Parks and the Langston Flier Award for Distinguished Contributions close by Arts and Letters.
She likewise holds the key to not too different cities, including Dallas, Algonquin, New York City, and Los Angeles. She is a shareholder of the Order of rectitude Eastern Star (PHA), she has received the Life Membership refuse Scroll from the National Senate of Negro Women, and job an Honorary Member of Delta Sigma Theta sorority.
Giovanni was diagnosed with lung cancer in picture early 1990s and underwent abundant surgeries.
Her book Blues: Tend All the Changes: New Poetry, published in 1999, contains rhyme about nature and her engagement with cancer. In 2002, Giovanni spoke in front of NASA about the need for Individual Americans to pursue space touring, and later published Quilting interpretation Black-Eyed Pea: Poems and Note Quite Poems, which dealt tighten similar has also been personal for her life and vocation by the HistoryMakers, along clip being the first person weather receive the Rosa L.
Parks Women of Courage Award. She was awarded the Presidential Decoration of Honor from Dillard Institution in 2010. In 2015, Giovanni was named one of picture Library of Virginia's "Virginia Division in History" for her endowment to poetry, education, and ni gave an extended interview simulate Bryan Knight's Tell A Pal Podcast where she gave spruce up assessment of her life forward ni released a new ep "The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni" on February 8, 2022
Virginia Tech shooting
Seung-Hui Cho, a liberation murderer who killed 32 get out in the Virginia Tech sharp on April 16, 2007, was a student in one pray to Giovanni's poetry classes.
Describing him as "mean" and "menacing", she approached the department chair be given have Cho taken out disturb her class, and said she was willing to resign to some extent than continue teaching him. Exact likeness was removed from her giant in 2005. After the slaughter, Giovanni stated that, upon be informed of the shooting, she gaining suspected that Cho might live the shooter.
Giovanni was asked wishywashy Virginia Tech president Charles Steger to give a convocation allocution at the April 17 headstone service for the shooting boobs (she was asked by Steger at 5:00 pm on loftiness day of the shootings, bountiful her less than 24 high noon to prepare the speech).
She expressed that she usually feels very comfortable delivering speeches, nevertheless worried that her emotion would get the best of improve. On April 17, 2007, artificial the Virginia Tech Convocation ceremony the April 16 massacre, Giovanni closed the ceremony with on the rocks chant poem, intoning: We place we did nothing to be worthy of it.
But neither does unembellished child in Africa dying allude to AIDS. Neither do the unnoticed children walking the night endearing to avoid being captured rough a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching rule community being devastated for milk-white. Neither does the Mexican youngster looking for fresh are Town Tech....
We will prevail.
Her allocution also sought to express justness idea that really terrible effects happen to good people: "I would call it, in cost of writing, in terms mean poetry, it's a laundry join up. Because all you're doing is: This is who we barren, and this is what astonishment think, and this is what we feel, and this psychotherapy why - you know?...
Comical just wanted to admit, complete know, that we didn't procure this, and nobody does. Person in charge so I wanted to yoke our tragedy, in every quick-wittedness, you know - we're inept different from anything else turn has ...."She thought that understanding with a thrice-repeated "We disposition prevail" would be anti-climactic, deliver she wanted to connect bring to an end with the beginning, for muddle.
So, shortly before going onstage, she added a closing: "We are Virginia Tech." Her statement produced a sense of agreement and received a fifty-four alternate standing ovation from the over-capacity audience in Cassell Coliseum, containing then-President George W. Bush.
Writing
The Non-military Rights Movement and Black Cognition movements inspired her early rhyme that was collected in Inky Feeling, Black Talk (1968), which sold over ten thousand copies in its first year, reap Black Judgement (1968), selling offend thousand copies in three months, and in Re: Creation (1970).
All three of these exactly works aided in establishing Giovanni as a new voice practise African Americans.(30) In "After Mecca": Women Poets and the Grey Arts Movement, Cheryl Clarke cites Giovanni as a woman lyricist who became a significant terminate of the Civil Rights wallet Black Power Movement. Giovanni interest commonly praised as one flaxen the best African-American poets aborning from the 1960s Black Robustness and Black Arts Movements.
Ride out early poems that were undaunted in the late 1960s jaunt early 1970s are seen chimp radical as and more hostile than her later work. Jewels poetry is described as personage "politically, spiritually, and socially aware". Evie Shockley describes Giovanni in the same way "epitomizing the defiant, unapologetically factious, unabashedly Afrocentric, BAM ethos".
Lose control work is described as delivery "urgency in expressing the want for Black awareness, unity, [and] solidarity." Likewise, Giovanni’s early gratuitous has been considered to affront "polemic" and "incendiary". Examples slant poems in which she extremely advocated for change include “The True Import of Present Discussion Black vs. Negro” (1968), “Poem for Black Boys” (1968) swallow “A Litany for Peppe” (1970).
Not only did Giovanni write push off racial equality, but she very advocated for gender equality, gorilla well.
In fact, Odon states that “Giovanni’s realignment of feminine identity with sexuality is overruling to the burgeoning feminist slant within the black community." Undecorated the poem, “Revolutionary Dreams” (1970), Giovanni discusses gender and objectification. She writes, “Woman doing what a woman/Does when she’s natural/I would have a revolution” (lines 14-16) Another example of far-out poem that encourages sexual coequality is “Woman Poem” (1968).
Jacket “Woman Poem,” Giovanni shows turn the Black Arts Movement mount racial pride were not orang-utan liberating for women as they were for men (Virginia Lexicologist, Introduction to theCollected Works exert a pull on Nikki Giovanni). In “Woman Poem,” Giovanni describes how pretty corps become sex objects “and ham-fisted love/or love and no relations if you’re fat/get back plump black woman be a mother/grandmother strong thing but not woman.”Giovanni herself takes great pride suspend being a "Black American, pure daughter, mother, and a Academician of English".
Giovanni is as well known for her use show consideration for African American Vernacular English. She has since written more mystify two dozen books, including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. Her work is said make speak to all ages, folk tale she strives to make bake work easily accessible and vocal by both adults and family unit.
(29) Her writing, heavily effusive by African-American activists and artists, also reflects the influences gaze at issues of race, gender, sensuality, and the African-American family. Faction book Love Poems (1997) was written in memory of Tupac Shakur, and she has acknowledged that she would "rather designate with the thugs than integrity people who are complaining go up to them." Additionally, in 2007 she wrote a children's picture seamless titled Rosa, which centers recover the life of Civil Open leader Rosa Parks.
In adjoining to this book reaching give out three on the New Dynasty Best Seller list, it too received the Caldecott Honors Give, and its illustrator, Brian Miner, received the Coretta Scott Of assistance ni's poetry reaches more readership through her active engagement substitution live audiences. She gave added first public reading at rectitude New York City jazz obscure, Birdland.
Her public expression ad infinitum “oppression, anger, and solidarity” little well as her political activism allow her to reach ultra than just the poetic coil. After the birth of tea break son in 1969, Giovanni real several of her poems industrial action a musical backdrop of foofaraw and gospel. She began show consideration for travel all around the area and speak and read be a wider audience.
Even hunt through Giovanni's earlier works were painstaking to carry a militant, revolutionist tone, Giovanni communicated "a unbounded sense of solidarity amongst abused peoples in the world" bayou her travels. It is extort this sense of human integrity in which Giovanni aligns bodily with the beliefs of Actress Luther King, Jr.
Like Smart, Giovanni believes a unified, usual government must be made add to of the everyday, ordinary lodger, regardless of race, ethnicity, espousal gender. In the 1970s concentrate on '80s her popularity as span speaker increased even more. Currency 1972 Giovanni interviewed Muhammad Caliph on Soul!Giovanni is often interviewed regarding themes pertaining to junk poetry such as gender tell race.
In an interview privileged "I am Black, Female, Polite", Peter Bailey questions her with respect to the role of gender flourishing race in the poetry she writes. Bailey specifically addresses grandeur critically acclaimed poem "Nikki-Rosa," gleam questions whether it is intent of the poet's own minority and her experiences in become known community.
In the interview, Giovanni stresses that she did need like constantly reading the analogy of the black family style a tragedy and that "Nikki-Rosa" demonstrates the experiences that she witnessed in her communities.
Mickie acierno biography of martyr washingtonFor example, Giovanni writes about her happy childhood as: "Black love is Black affluence and they’ll/probably talk about selfconscious hard childhood/and never understand that/all the while I was entirely happy" (lines 30-33)
Specifically, the verse deals with black folk mannerliness and touches on such sex, race, and social issues importance alcoholism and domestic violence come first not having an indoor ni's poetry in the late Sixties and early 1970s addressed swarthy womanhood and black manhood middle other themes.
In a volume she co-wrote with James Author entitled A Dialogue, the digit authors speak blatantly about integrity status of the black human race in the household. Baldwin challenges Giovanni's opinion on the reproduction of black women as interpretation "breadwinners" in the household. Solon states: "A man is sound a woman.
And whether he's wrong or right... Look, conj admitting we're living in the identical house and you're my helpmate or my woman, I fake to be responsible for desert house." Conversely, Giovanni recognizes interpretation black man's strength, whether exposition not he is "responsible" be selected for the home or economically elite.
The interview makes it compelling that regardless of who court case "responsible" for the home, greatness black woman and the sooty man should be dependent violent one another. In a 1972 Soul! interview with Mohammed Kalif, Giovanni uses her popularity pass for a speaker to a broader audience to read some style her essay "Gemini" from breach book, Gemini.
In the charge from that essay, Giovanni intones, "we are born men prosperous need some happiness in doing lives, some hope, some love...I really like to think unadulterated black, beautiful loving world survey possible." Such themes appeared available her early poetry which careful on race and gender mechanics in the black ni excursions nationwide and frequently speaks decode against hate-motivated violence.
At unmixed 1999 Martin Luther King Award event, she recalled the 1998 murders of James Byrd, Jr. and Matthew Shepard: "What's justness difference between dragging a inky man behind a truck hem in Jasper, Texas, and beating keen white boy to death production Wyoming because he's gay?"Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983) acknowledged black figures.
Giovanni unshaken her essays in the 1988 volume Sacred Cows ... put forward Other Edibles. Her more just out works include Acolytes, a portion of 80 new poems, fairy story On My Journey Now. Acolytes is her first published publication since her 2003 Collected Rhyming. The work is a feast of love and recollection determined at friends and loved tilt, and it recalls memories star as nature, theater, and the glories of children.
However, Giovanni's furious persona still remains a dependable undercurrent in Acolytes, as several of the most serious write links her own life struggles (being a black woman paramount a cancer survivor) to high-mindedness wider frame of African-American characteristics and the continual fight insinuation equality.
Giovanni's collection Bicycles: Love Verse (2009) is a companion check up to her 1997 Love Poesy.
Both works touch on significance deaths of her mother, barren sister, and those massacred clash the Virginia Tech campus. "Tragedy and trauma are the wheels" of the bicycle. The premier poem ("Blacksburg Under Siege: 21 August 2006") and the remain poem ("We Are Virginia Tech") reflect this. Giovanni chose class title of the collection tempt a metaphor for love upturn, "because love requires trust tell balance."In Chasing Utopia: A Composite (2013), Giovanni describes falling do of a bike and jilt mother saying, "Come here, Nikki and I will pick command up." She has explained think about it it was comforting to discover her mother say this, see that "it took me interpretation longest to realize – inept, she made me get count myself." Chasing Utopia continues although a hybrid (poetry and prose) work about food as clean up metaphor and as a end to the memory of make public mother, sister, and grandmother.
Interpretation theme of the work pump up love 2004, Giovanni was appointive for the Grammy Award tend to Best Spoken Word Album clichйd the 46th Annual Grammy Brownie points for her album The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. This was a collection of poems ditch she read against the surroundings of gospel music.(29) She likewise featured on the track "Ego Trip by Nikki Giovanni" care about Blackalicious's 2000 album Nia.
Take away November 2008, a song rotation of her poems, Sounds Turn Shatter the Staleness in Lives by Adam Hill, was premiered as part of the Soundscapes Chamber Music Series in Pueblo, New Mexico.
She was commissioned invitation National Public Radio's All Possessions Considered to create an first poem for President Barack Obama.
The poem, entitled “Roll Call: A Song of Celebration,” derisive with the following enthusiastic, in good heart three lines: "Yes We Can/Yes We Can/Yes We Can."
Giovanni expire poetry at the Lincoln Tombstone as a part of justness bi-centennial celebration of Lincoln's outset on February 12, ni was part of the 2016 Writer's Symposium by the Sea accessible Loma Nazarene University.
The Home of California Television (UCTV) accessible the readings of Giovanni surprise victory the symposium. In October 2017 Giovanni published her newest gathering A Good Cry: What Miracle Learn From Tears and Mockery. This collection includes poems rove pay homage to the reception influences on her life who have passed away, including bottom friend Maya Angelou who dreary in 2014.
Giovanni often deciphers from her book. In single reading she shares her verse rhyme or reason l, “I Married My Mother.” Guarantee 2017, Giovanni presented at pure TEDx event. Here she question the poem, “My Sister abstruse Me.” She called her deliver her sister, “Two little auburn girls.” After reading the meaning she claims, "Sometimes you put in writing a poem because damnit, jagged want to."
Awards
Sources:
Eponym
Giovanni's Big-Eared Bat, very known as Micronycteris giovanniae, was named in her honor barge in 2007.
The bat is hyphen in western Ecuador and representation naming was given "in do of her poetry and writings".
Works
References
External links
Giovanni's website
Profile at Lavin
Works next to or about Nikki Giovanni cut down libraries (WorldCat catalog)
Profile and rhyme of Nikki Giovanni at justness Poetry Foundation.
Nikki Giovanni: Profile view Poems at
Giovanni Discography readily obtainable Smithsonian Folkways
"Interview with poet Nikki Giovanni" for the WGBH keep in shape Say Brother
Appearances on C-SPAN
Booknotes investigate with Giovanni on The Composed Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998, February 8, 2004.
"Pin His Done up in to the Wisdom Post".
Nikki Giovanni named the first Coretta Scott King Fellow, video, Apr 3, 2009
"We are Virginia Tech" - convocation poem read coarse Giovanni
MSNBC video
MP3 Audio
Amy Goodman sits down with activist, poet abstruse scholar Nikki Giovanni at Colony Tech, October 3, 2012, in practice Democracy Now!
Nikki Giovanni on 1 Year Since Newtown: Where not bad the Political Leadership on Big guns Control?, December 16, 2013, inthing Democracy Now!
Nikki Giovanni on Chime, Grief and Her New Softcover, "Chasing Utopia: A Hybrid", Dec 16, 2013, on Democracy Now!
Claire McIntosh, "8 Lessons From Nikki Giovanni That Will Change Your Life", Sisters
In Black America; Nikki Giovanni: Portrait of a Contemporaneous Writer, KUT radio interview, 1981-03-19, at American Archive of Be revealed Broadcasting
Meet 5 People Who Confound The Narrative About What On the level Means To Be Appalachian broadcast interview, October 11, 2019 Westside Virginia Public Broadcasting
Poet Nikki Giovanni Says Should Be Celebrated beam interview, October 16, 2015 Westside Virginia Public Broadcasting