Nikki Giovanni
Nikki Giovanni
Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni, Jr.is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. She has won numerous awards, including the Langston Hughes Medal, the NAACP Image Award, and has been nominated for a Grammy Award, for her Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection. Additionally, she has recently been named as one of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth7 June 1943
CityKnoxville, TN
CountryUnited States of America
She doesn't have a lot of attitude. She was going about her business, and she was within her rights to be where she was. She wasn't trying to lead. She simply said, 'Enough. Here I stand.' I think people need to know that.
I am honest; I try to be truthful. I like people and wish us well. We are not always deserving of our own best wishes.
We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it; it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.
When younger, I thought one of the particulars of being "Homo sapiens" was to communicate. I have not learned not to, though I am cautious when I try.
My work is a part of me and I know it. I have no reason to try to pick one part of me out from the rest. I only see my work, or rather I should say I see my work only telling my part of the human experience.
The unwillingness to try is worse than any failure.
don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.
She sounds extremely creative, in that she turned historical figures into mythical figures. Obviously, she's absorbing images and metaphors, and shows she's thinking. What more do we want a seven-year-old to do?
it's a sex object if you're pretty and no love or love and no sex if you're fat
When you are skinning your customers, you should leave some skin on to grow again so that you can skin them again.
If you know what you're talking about, or if you feel that you do, the reader will believe you.
I resent people who say writers write from experience. Writers don't write from experience, though many are hesitant to admit that they don't. I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.
Kevin Powell is pushing to bring, as he has so brilliantly done before, the voices of his generation: the concerns, the cares, the fears and the fearlessness.
His headstone said "Free at last, Free at last" - But death is a slave's freedom - We seek the freedom of free men - And the construction of a world - Where Martin Luther King could have lived - and preached non-violence