Nikki Giovanni, "the charismatic and iconoclastic poet, activist, children's book author and professor who wrote, irresistibly and sensuously, about race, politics, gender, sex and love," died yesterday at age 81, according to the New York Times.
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As the Times noted, Giovanni was "a prolific star of the Black Arts movement," but was also independent of it. She was "a celebrity poet and public intellectual who appeared on television and toured the country. She was a riveting performer, diminutive at just 105 pounds--as reporters never failed to point out--her cadence inflected by the jazz and blues music she loved, with the timing of a comedian or a Baptist preacher who drew crowds wherever she appeared throughout her life. She said her best audiences were college students and prison inmates." She appeared regularly on Soul!, the Black culture program that aired on public television from 1967 to 1972.
Giovanni wrote more than two dozen books, including volumes of poetry, illustrated children's books, and three collections of essays. Her early poetry included Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968), Black Judgement (1968), and Re: Creation (1970). In 1971, she published the memoir Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet. Her other poetry collections include The Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996), Blues: For All the Changes (1999), The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni: 1968-1998 (2003), and Bicycles: Love Poems (2009).
Her 2007 children's picture book Rosa, focused on Rosa Parks, won a Caldecott Honor Award, and its illustrator, Brian Collier, won a Coretta Scott King Award. Among Giovanni's many awards and honors were multiple NAACP Image Awards, the Langston Hughes Award, and the Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award.
Several indie booksellers paid tribute to Giovanni on social media, including Baldwin & Co., New Orleans, La., which posted, in part: "Nikki Giovanni taught us to see ourselves, to honor our stories, and to speak truth to power with grace and boldness. She dared us to dream beyond boundaries and loved our culture fiercely through her poetry, essays, and presence. As we reflect on her life and legacy, let us honor her by continuing to create, to write, and to uplift one another. Rest in power, Nikki Giovanni. You will forever be missed, but your words will live on in our hearts."
MahoganyBooks, Oxon Hill, Md., Noted: "Dearest Nikki Giovanni. Rest well.
Our prayer is that you knew how much so many of us loved you. That you felt it without one piece of doubt. Knew that we felt seen by your words so deftly written on each page and your imagination of what 'Us' could be. Whew! We were just with you in February and we chuckled at the shirts we wore... unplanned and all reveling in our continued boldness to celebrate our history, our books that others... think necessary to ban. Your light will remain lit for a lifetime."