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, though she returned to Knoxville to live with her grandparents in 1958, and attended the city's Austin High School. In 1960, she began her studies at her grandfather's alma mater, Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee. She had a difficult time adjusting to college life and was subsequently expelled. However, she realized that she needed an education, drove back to Nashville, spoke with the Dean of Women, and was readmitted. In 1967, she graduated with honors with a B.A. in History. She returned to Cincinnati and established the city's first Black Arts Festival. Giovanni also began writing the poems that are included in her first self-published volume, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968). Afterward she went on to attend graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia University.
In 1969, Giovanni began teaching at Livingston College of Rutgers University. In 1970 she began making regular appearances on the television program, Soul!, an entertainment/variety/talk show which promoted black art and culture and allowed political expression. Soul! hosted important guests like: Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, Gladys Knight, Miriam Makeba, and Stevie Wonder. (In addition to being a "regular" on the show, Giovanni for several years helped design and produce episodes.) She also gave birth to her only son, Thomas Watson Giovanni. Since 1987, she has taught writing and literature at Virginia Tech, where she is a University Distinguished Professor.
Seung-Hui Cho, the mass murderer who killed 32 people in the April 16, 2007 Virginia Tech shooting, was a student in one of Giovanni's poetry classes. Describing him as "mean" and "menacing", 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.
Giovanni was asked by Virginia Tech president Charles Steger to give a convocation speech at the April 17 memorial service for the shooting victims (she was asked by Steger at 5pm on the day of the shootings, giving her less than 24 hours to prepare the speech). She expressed that she usually feels very comfortable delivering speeches, but worried that her emotion would get the best of her. On April 17, 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, ”
Her speech also sought to express the idea that really terrible things happen to good people: "I would call it, in terms of writing, in terms of poetry, it's a laundry list. Because all you're doing is: This is who we are, and this is what we think, and this is what we feel, and this is why - you know?... I just wanted to admit, you know, that we didn't deserve this, and nobody does. And so I wanted to link our tragedy, in every sense, you know - we're no different from anything else that has hurt...." She thought that ending with a thrice-repeated "We will prevail" would be anticlimactic, and she wanted to connect back with the beginning, for balance. So, shortly before going onstage, she added a closing: "We are Virginia Tech."
Giovanni's poetry in the late 1960s and early 1970s addressed black womanhood and black manhood amongst other themes. In a book she co-wrote with James Baldwin entitled A Dialogue, the two authors speak blatantly about the status of the black male in the household. Baldwin challenges Giovanni's opinion on the representation of black women as the “breadwinners” in the household. Baldwin states, “A man is not a woman. And whether he’s wrong or right.... Look, if we’re living in the same house and you’re my wife or my woman, I have to be responsible for that house.". Conversely, Giovanni recognizes the black man’s strength, whether or not he is "responsible" for the home or economically advantaged. The interview makes it clear that regardless of who is "responsible" for the home, the black woman and black man should be dependent on one another. Such themes appeared throughout her early poetry which focused on race and gender dynamics in the black community.
The Civil Rights Movement and Black Power movements inspired her early poetry that was collected in Black Feeling, Black Talk(1967),which sold over ten thousand copies in its first year, Black Judgement (1968), selling six thousand copies in three months,and Re: Creation (1970). All three of these early works aided in establishing Giovanni as a new voice for African Americans.(30) In "After Mecca”: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement, Cheryl Clarke cites Giovanni as a woman poet who became a significant part of the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement. Giovanni is commonly praised as one of the best African-American poets emerging from the 1960s Black Power and Black Arts Movements.
Her work is described as conveying “urgency in expressing the need for Black awareness, unity, [and] solidarity.” Giovanni herself takes great pride in being a “Black American, a daughter, mother, and a Professor of English.” She has since written more than two dozen books, including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. Her work is said to speak to all ages and she strives to make her work easily accessible and understood by both adults and children. Her writing has been heavily inspired by African-American activists and artists.
Issues of race, gender, sexuality, and the African-American family also have influenced her work. 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 is often interviewed regarding themes pertaining to her poetry such as gender and race. In an interview entitled "I am Black, Female, Polite", Peter Bailey questions her regarding the role of gender and race in the poetry she writes. The interview looks specifically at the critically acclaimed poem, "Nikki-Rosa", and questions whether it is reflective of her own childhood experiences as well as the experiences in her community. In the interview, Giovanni stresses that she did not like constantly reading the trope of the black family as a tragedy and that "Nikki-Rosa" demonstrates the experiences that she witnessed in her communities. Specifically the poem deals with black folk culture, and touches on such issues as alcoholism and domestic violence, and such issues as not having an indoor bathroom.
Her more recent works include Acolytes, a collection of 80 new poems, and On My Journey Now. Acolytes is her first published volume since her 2003 Collected Poems. 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 inAcolytes, as some of the most serious verse links 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.
In 2004, Giovanni was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Spoken Word Album at the 46th Annual Grammy Awards for her albumThe Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. This was a collection of poems that she read against the backdrop of gospel music. 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.
Additionally, in 2007 she wrote a children’s picture book titled Rosa, which centers on the life of Civil Rights leader Rosa Parks. In addition to this book reaching number three on the New York Best Seller list, it also received the Caldecott Honors Award along with its illustrator Brian Collier, receiving the Coretta Scott King award.
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 bi-centennial celebration of Lincoln's birth on February 12, 2009.
REFERENCE:
I do not take credit for anything I share.
THROUGH THE YEARS
Nikki Giovanni then: Black Arts poet and nationalist revolutionary in the 1960s.
Nikki Giovanni the power of words can mystify and amaze the greatest of minds
"Ego Tripping" by Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni; with son Thomas Giovanni
Nikki with Toni Morrison
Hundreds of eager listeners filed through the wide, swinging doors of room 117 in Edwards Hall of The New River Community College (NRCC) on Sunday, March 20, to hear Virginia Tech’s esteemed and accomplished Nikki Giovanni speak about the celebration of black history, Appalachians and creative writers.
Nikki Giovanni's "The Great Pax Whitie" (Peace Be Still) Made during the Great Civil Rights Era. Listen to Sister Nikki
Nikki Giovanni's "Ego Tripping"
Nikki Giovanni's "Poem for Aretha" (Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen)
THERE ARE PLENTY OF HER POEMS ON YOUTUBE. I ONLY LISTED THREE HERE, BUT I WOULD ADVISE YOU GETTING INTO MORE OF NIKKI GIOVANNI'S POEMS ON YOUR OWN
Comments
Post a Comment