In 2004, her album The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection was nominated for a Grammy. She’s published 19 collections of poetry, 8 nonfiction works, 12 books for kids, and 10 spoken word recordings. Giovanni has expressed herself prolifically. The book features some of Giovanni’s most well-known poems, including “ Knoxville, Tennessee,” “Nikki-Rosa,” and “Dreams.” She engaged with poets like Sonia Sanchez and Amiri Baraka, and she became a key figure in the Black Arts Movement-an artistic community that encouraged Black artists to express themselves with abandon and without concern for how white audiences might judge them. That same year, 1968, she published her second collection of poems, Black Judgement.
While Giovanni was at Columbia University, she published her first book of poems, Black Feeling Black Talk. Giovanni lives with the English professor Virginia Fowler. In 1969, she had her first and only child, Thomas. She studied history at Fisk University and creative writing at Columbia University. As a teen, Giovanni returned to Tennessee to live with her grandparents. The Giovanni household listened to all kinds of music-gospel, opera, jazz, R&B-on the radio, but the parents fought.
The same year, Giovanni’s family moved to Ohio, and her parents secured jobs as teachers. Her birth name was Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr., but her big sister, Gary Ann, called her Nikki for unknown reasons, and the name stuck.
Nikki Giovanni was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, on August 3, 1943. She’s earned countless honors and citations: She’s won seven NAACP Image Awards in 2005, Oprah Winfrey named her one of the 25 Living Legends and in 2017, she won the Maya Angelou Lifetime Achievement Award. Giovanni has published a prodigious amount of work-poetry collections, prose, and children’s books-and she releases music and spoken word records. Yet Giovanni is a well-known poet, and she occupies the literary spotlight. The poem sends the message that a person doesn’t have to occupy the spotlight to empower others. A lyrical and somewhat confessional poem, “Dreams” shows how a Black woman manages to set aside her dreams of stardom and create an inspiring existence as a mature, sensible adult.
0 kommentar(er)
