‘The Princess of Black Poetry” Nikki Giovanni has died. She was 81 years old.
Giovanni’s wife said she died from complications from lung cancer, The New York Times reported. She had battled cancer two previous times.
Virginia Tech, where she was a retired professor, said she died on Monday.
She was still doing readings as recently as November, working with saxophonist Javon Jackson in Queens, The Washington Post reported.
Giovanni was named Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. but was called Nikki by her older sister. She was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, but was raised in Lincoln Heights, a Cincinnati suburb. The Post reported her father was a juvenile probation officer who beat her mother.
Giovanni wrote about her upbringing, talking frankly about what it was like, in her poem “Nikki-Rosa” — “childhood remembrances are always a drag / if you’re Black ... 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.”
She moved in with her grandparents in Knoxville, attending high school there. She enrolled at the age of 17 at Fisk University but was expelled after leaving the Nashville school for Thanksgiving without having permission and after having arguments with the dean of women. When the dean left, Giovanni returned.
Giovanni did not start as a civil rights activist, backing Sen. Barry Goldwater for president in 1964, and reading books by Ayn Rand. But she began working for equality, restarting a chapter of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and editing a school literally magazine before being published in national publications such as Negro Digest in 1966, where she penned an essay challenging sexism in the movement. “Is it necessary that I cease being a Black woman... so that he can be a man?” she wrote.
Her grandmother’s death inspired poems in her first book “Black Feeling Black Talk,” which she self-published in 1968 after studying social work for a semester at the University of Pennsylvania, the Post reported.
She continued publishing books and gave readings at churches and community centers.
Her activism softened with the birth of her son, the newspaper said. She even wrote a children’s poetry book “Spin a Soft Black Song,” followed by “Rosa,” which told the story of Rosa Parks and was a runner-up for the Caldecott Medal.
Giovanni won an Emmy for Exceptional Merit in Documentary Filmmaking for “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project,” CNN reported. Her most recent book “The Last Book” will be published next fall.
When Giovanni retired from Virginia Tech in 2022, she said she wanted to inspire the next generation.
“I want my students to not accept what they are hearing, but to look and say ‘what kind of sense does this make?’ and ‘what is going to be the end result?’” she said.
Her death will leave a mark on the campus.
“Nikki Giovanni was a treasure who lived out Ut Prosim in countless ways, using her literary gifts to motivate change, encourage critical thought, inspire us to dream, and provide comfort in times of sadness and grief,” Virginia Tech President Tim Sands said in a statement. “Her spirit endures through her words and the students she inspired to express themselves through writing and poetry. She will be deeply missed and forever remembered by her Hokie family.”
Giovanni leaves behind her wife, Virginia “Ginney” Fowler, her son and granddaughter, the Post reported.
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