Nikki Giovanni (Nikki Yolande Cornelia Giovanni) Biography

African-American poet, born in Knoxville, Tennessee, educated at Fisk University, Nashville, University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work, Philadelphia, and Columbia University, New York. She has held several academic appointments. Her poetry reflects the political turbulence, and African-American struggle for civil rights, of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Colloquial and expansive in style, the poems are notable for their revolutionary political rhetoric. The Women and the Men (1975) is generally considered to be her best volume. Other collections include Black Judgement (1968), My House (1972), and Those Who Ride the Night Winds (1983). Her other books include Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet (1971), A Dialogue: James Baldwin and Nikki Giovanni (1973), A Poetic Equation: Conversations Between Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker (1974), Sacred Cows (1988), a collection of essays, and Racism 101 (1994), on African-American social conditions. Grand Mothers (1994) and Knoxville, Tennessee (1994) are poems for children. She is also a compelling performer of her own work, which is recorded in Legacies (1976) and The Reason I Like Chocolate (1976).