Nikki Giovanni

By Arthur Fladger

Nikki Giovanni was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee, but raised in the Lincoln Heights neighborhood of Cincinnati, Ohio. She is the daughter of a probation officer and a social worker.

Giovanni entered Fisk University in September 1960, however Fisk did not appeal to her. She was placed on probation and eventually suspended. Giovanni returned to Fisk in 1964, graduating magna cum laude in February 1967 with honors in history. Her graduate studies included a stint at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work on a Ford Foundation grant. She later entered the School of Fine Arts at Columbia University. Giovanni was responsible for getting S.N.C.C.(Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) reinstated on Fisk’s campus. She also took part in the Fisk Writers Workshop, directed by the distinguished author John O. Killens, who influenced her writing and her politics.

Ms. Giovanni emerged on the artistic and political scene as one of the New Black Poets, who became popular in the 1960's. The outspokenness of her style and her message earned her extraordinary public acclaim, which she continues to enjoy. Her first poems were militant calls to armed action for all black people who desired freedom from racism and injustice in America. Her writing and her political activities , however, were large, clear reflections of her commitment to end oppression and her allegiance to the emerging civil rights movement. Her later works focused on the individual struggle for fulfillment rather than the collective struggle for black empowerment. Radicalized by the assasination of Malcolm X and by the rise of the militant Black Panthers, her poetry in the 1960's and 1970's was colorful and combative. In her first three collection of poems, Black Feeling, Black Talk(1968), Black Judgement(1968), and Re:creation(1970), her content was urgently revolutionary with deliberate interpretation of experience through a black perspective. Giovanni’s experiences as a single mother then began to influence her poetry.Spin a Soft Black Song(1971), Ego Tripping(1973) and Vacation Time(1980) were collections of poems for children. Loneliness, thwarted hopes, and the theme of family affection became increasingly important in her poetry in the 1970's. She returned to political concerns in Those Who Ride the Night Winds(1983), with dedications to Black American heroes and heroines.

Nikki Giovanni’s work has been criticized as unpredictable and uneven; similar critiques are often also leveled against her as a person. Critics observe that the range of her work represents her rite of passage into womanhood as very important since life and Giovanni’s poetry and prose reflect normal personal and intellectual change.

Giovanni is now a professor at Virginia Tech, where she teaches English.Recently, she underwent a successful operation for lung cancer.