Nikki Giovanni, the fiery poet, author, activist, and educator whose words remind us of the power of art to evoke change, inspire hope, and express the depth of the human experience, died on Dec. 9, in Blacksburg, VA. She was 81. Her death was due to complications from lung cancer, according to her wife Virginia Fowler.
Giovanni’s last live performance at NJPAC occurred on Oct. 19, where she appeared in a familiar jazz configuration that featured tenor saxophonist Javon Jackson, bassist Christian McBride, and pianist Jeremy Masasia. Once aware of her New Jersey performance, it was evident I would definitely be in attendance. On that Saturday morning, I was up early to make the trek from Manhattan to Newark. I arrived 30 minutes early and sat in anticipation, surrounded by women, in a sold-out auditorium.
After a few tunes from the trio, Jackson accompanied Giovanni to the stage as a thunderous roar erupted, combined with a standing ovation that lasted for a wonderful 3 minutes. The combustion only subsided with the poet’s soft response: “Thank you, thank you, but the show isn’t that long.” There was joy on her face and we felt her love — it was an emotional moment for all.
Giovanni recited poetry and shared life experiences, including her days at Fisk University, which drew explosive cheers from an obvious alumni section. A contingency of the poet’s honorary sorority Delta Sigma Theta could be heard during their mention.
At one point, Giovanni talked about her ongoing battle with cancer, which sparked a loud gasp from the audience. My heart fell to the bottom of my shoes like an out-of-control elevator dropping 30 floors down. “Well, I asked my doctor what was he going to do about it because I’m going to keep on living,” she said. With a sigh, we all laughed along with her and she then carried on in grand form.
After the concert, Giovanni was available in the lobby for a book signing; at least 10 titles were on sale. As she signed my copies of her books, I took the opportunity to let her know how much she influenced my writing over the years and my being a fellow HBCU alum (from FAMU). She smiled, offered me congratulations, and noted that FAMU was one of her next stops. That performance is now a historical event, a magical moment.
Since recording their first album together, “The Gospel According to Nikki Giovanni” (2022), the poet and Jackson had become somewhat of a collaborative team, recording their second album earlier this year, “Javon & Nikki Go to the Movies” (Solid Jackson Records, 2024). This album selects some of Giovanni’s favorites — standards from the Great American Songbook, many of them originally composed for Hollywood classics, as well as three Jackson originals and one by Sonny Rollins.
Giovanni has been connected to the jazz scene since the tumultuous 1960s civil rights and Black Arts movements. Her words flow like a muted Miles Davis solo: all truth and spirited inspiration.
“Nikki had a creative spirit,” said Jackson. “Her vast knowledge and appreciation of Lester Young and Billie Holiday was part of the love of having her onstage with me.”
Giovanni’s life and career were the subject of the documentary “Going to Mars: The Nikki Giovanni Project” (2023), which in 2024 won an Emmy Award for exceptional merit in documentary filmmaking. During her prominent career, Giovanni wrote over 25 books, several collections of poetry, nonfiction essays, poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, with topics ranging from race, gender, sexuality, and social issues to children’s literature.
Her reputation began to surface in the late 1960s with her bullet-piercing words during the civil rights and Black Power Movements. She was one of the notable authors of the Black Arts Movement that was an extension of the Harlem Renaissance. Her prose, poems, and spoken word presentations reflected personal passions such as food, romance, family, and space travel — which she felt Black women were more than qualified for, given all they had survived on Earth.
Her poem “Biscuits Dropping or Baked” denoted food passion in the Black family tradition: “serve them warm remembering summer mornings before church/ or Saturday evenings with fried fish/ Biscuits always bring memories of home.” Her poem “Still Life with Apron,” expresses the erotic nature of food and cooking.
One of her most memorable poems, which a generation of students, fans, and revolutionaries committed to memory, was “Ego Tripping (there may be a reason why).” That poem is defiant, inspirational, uplifting ode to Black womanhood: “I was born in the Congo/I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the Sphinx/I designed a pyramid so tough that a star/That only glows every one hundred years falls/Into the center giving divine perfect light /I am bad.”
In 1968, Giovanni self-published her first volume of poetry, “Black Feeling, Black Talk.” It included one of her best-known poems “Nikki-Rosa.” Another early collection, 1972’s “Gemini,” was a finalist for a National Book Award. She founded the publishing company NikTom, publishing her own work as well as that of fellow Black women writers like Gwendolyn Brooks and Carolyn Rodgers. “My dream was not to publish or even to be a writer; my dream was to discover something no one else had thought of,” Giovanni said. “I guess that’s why I’m a poet. We put things together in ways no one else does.”
She became a regular guest on the WNET television program “Soul!” With its host Elis Haizlip, the program served as a platform for political expression and entertainment that featured such influential guests as Muhammad Ali, Jesse Jackson, Gladys Knight, and Miriam Makeba.
Giovanni’s candid conversation with James Baldwin on “Soul!,” filmed in London in 1971, has become popular on social media with a new following among younger generations. The two-part special was one of the most significant conversations between two intellectual Black authors of opposite sexes in television history. It led to their co-authoring a book entitled “A Dialogue,” in which the two authors spoke candidly about the meaning of Black manhood and Black womanhood.
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. was born on June 7, 1943, in Knoxville, Tenn., to Yolande (Watson) Giovanni and Jones “Gus” Giovanni. Her older sister, Gary Ann, nicknamed her Nikki. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Cincinnati, where she grew up under the dark cloud of segregation. She would travel often between Tennessee and Ohio, bound to her parents and to her maternal grandparents in her “spiritual home” in Knoxville.
At age 16, she attended Fisk University, in Nashville, Tenn., where future activist and legislator John Lewis was a fellow student. Giovanni was asked to leave after a dispute over leaving campus without permission and other rules. When she returned to classes, John Oliver Killens (a founder of the Harlem Writers Guild) was one of her professors.
She graduated from Fisk in 1967 with honors, the same year she organized Cincinnati’s first Black Arts Festival.
Giovanni attended the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Social Work on a Ford Fellowship, but dropped out. The dean arranged for her to receive a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship to attend Columbia University’s School of Fine Arts, but she eventually decided to leave to pursue writing full time.
She began teaching in 1969, at Livingston College of Rutgers University, and some years later, she started teaching creative writing and literature at Virginia Tech, where she taught until December 2022. During her time at Virginia Tech, she earned the title of University Professor Emerita.
In 2007, that university was the site of a mass shooting. The gunman was a former student of Giovanni’s, and she had earlier alerted school authorities about his troubling behavior. At a memorial service, she recited a poem she wrote called “We Are Virginia Tech.” Giovanni ended the poem with “We are Virginia Tech, We will prevail.”
Giovanni’s many honors include seven N.A.A.C.P. awards, 31 honorary doctorates, the Langston Hughes Medal, the Harlem Cultural Council Award, and a 2004 Grammy Award nomination for her poetry album, “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection.” She was named as one of Oprah Winfrey’s 25 “Living Legends,” and she was Woman of the Year for the magazines Ebony, Mademoiselle, and Ladies’ Home Journal.
Her final work of poetry, titled “The Last Book,” is set to be published in 2025. During her performance at NJPAC, she noted, “I highly recommend old age; it’s fun.”
Giovanni is survived by her wife, Virginia Fowler, and her son and granddaughter, Thomas and Kai Giovanni, in addition to cousins Allison “Pat” Ragan and Haynes Ford, and nephew Christopher Black.
