The poet, activist and professor Nikki Giovanni has died. The cause was cancer, according to NPR.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni in 1943 in Knoxville, Tenn., Giovanni first came to national attention with her first book of poetry, “Black Feeling Black Talk,” in 1968. That work drew her to the forefront of both the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement, a Black nationalism effort that focused on the arts.
In the 1980s, she began teaching literature at Virginia Tech. She remained there until she retired in 2022.
She wrote more than 20 volumes of poetry during her long career.
Some of her most popular poems included “Nikki-Rosa,” a 1968 meditation on childhood in Black America which ended with some of the most memorable lines of the era:
“… 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”
Another was 1968’s “Ego Tripping,” from the perspective of a Black woman who recites her many accomplishments across history and continents. She declares herself “so perfect so divine so ethereal so surreal I cannot be comprehended except by my permission” ending with an iconic sing-song phrase intoned for decades across talent shows, pageants and poetry readings:
“I mean … I … can fly
Like a bird in the sky …”
Giovanni was 81. Survivors include her wife, son and granddaughter.
