People across the globe are mourning the death of Nikki Giovanni, who died Monday at the age of 81.
Giovanni, dubbed the "Princess of Black Poetry," died in a Virginia hospital of complications related to lung cancer. She'd fought the disease on and off since the 1990s.
Some of the renowned poet's formative years were spent in the Cincinnati suburb of Lincoln Heights. And during a career that placed her in the upper echelon of 20th century literary figures, Giovanni kept coming back to Cincinnati, a place she considered home.
Born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, Jr. in Tennessee in 1943, Giovanni moved with her family to Ohio around the age of four. Her older sister nicknamed her Nikki. The family settled first in Wyoming, then moved next door to Lincoln Heights during its early days as one of the first municipalities founded by Black residents. She recalled her youth there to fellow author Kathy Y. Wilson in a 2011 Cincinnati Magazine interview.
"We bought a home in Lincoln Heights on Jackson Street and we moved there for a long time, and then we bought a house on Congress Street," she told Wilson. "Lincoln Heights to me was a lovely place. When I was growing up it was a working-class community. I went to St. Simon’s and I walked to school every day, which I liked. We had Neal’s Grocery Store — he was a veteran — when we lived on Jackson Street."
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While Giovanni often spoke glowingly of Lincoln Heights, she also recalled in her writing and interviews that she got her first tastes of racism in Ohio.
Giovanni moved in with her grandmother in Knoxville, Tenn., when she was 15 to escape her father's abuse of her mother. She graduated high school early and went to Fisk University, where her grandmother had graduated from. She was temporarily expelled and studied briefly at the University of Cincinnati before returning to Fisk to get her bachelor's in history.
Soon after, she self-published her first two books, "Black Feeling Black Talk" and "Black Judgement," and had her son, Thomas.
During a 2022 interview in Cincinnati with Naimah Bilal, hosted by cultural organization Urban Consulate — which touched on everything from aliens to her love of Cincinnati chili — Giovanni recalled the drive to write and publish herself.
"I couldn't even begin to think that anyone would publish a book by a young Black woman who was 25, 26," she said. "So what I did was I went into the village and found a printer and asked, 'What would it cost to have a hundred books printed?' "
Her early works focused heavily on Black liberation, the Civil Rights movement and related themes. She grew in stature as the 1970s progressed, with national television interviews with figures like James Baldwin and Muhammad Ali, the landmark album "Truth is on its Way" and high-profile poetry readings and lecture appearances to her credit.
As she became more well known, her work shifted to focus on themes of love, family and Black joy.
She continued to return to Cincinnati. In 1985, she taught creative writing at Mount Saint Joseph College (now Mount Saint Joseph University).
In 1986, she became the Taft Museum's first Duncanson Artist-in-Residence.
"Her groundbreaking work set the tone for what this program would become — a celebration of Black creativity and an opportunity for artists to inspire and empower," the museum wrote in a Facebook post memorializing her. "Her contributions extended far beyond her own art. She embodied mentorship, encouragement, and the belief that art could be a transformative force for change."
Her fame took her elsewhere, of course. She was long a tenured professor at Virginia Tech University, where she met her wife Virginia C. Fowler. And she appeared across the world giving lectures and readings.
Her work grew to more than 30 books — including a forthcoming work called "The Last Book," due out next year — and garnered Giovanni an expansive number of awards and honorary degrees.
But she never forgot the Queen City.
In 2006, Giovanni read a work called "I Am Cincinnati" during the rededication of the Tyler Davidson Fountain Downtown. The piece ruffled feathers — it called a gubernatorial candidate at the time an expletive — but it also expressed nearly boundless hope for the city even as it referenced police shootings of Black residents and racism. Its final verses read:
"...Though I have been boycotted
I am not shirking my responsibilities to the next generation
I am finding a way to be great again
I am the lady in the fountain
Let my waters cleanse and refresh you
Let my waters heal
Together we can still save this city."
The poem's juxtapositions of hard language, hard truth and hard-held opinions with hope — in the goodness of life, in the possibility of connection and joy — were all hallmarks of Giovanni's work.
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She touched on those tensions in her 2022 Urban Consulate interview when asked about the current political climate.
"All I can honestly say is, I know I can't change the world," Giovanni said. "I couldn't change the world when I was 25 and thought I could. But I know I'm not going to let the world change me."
Giovanni will be buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati.