Source: Udo Salters Photography / Getty
Nikki Giovanni is now an ancestor. So many of us who loved her are still struggling with that reality while also understanding that she has always, always, been larger than life even as she fully reveled in it.
In one of Giovanni’s final interviews one month before she transitioned, NewsOne had the distinct honor of naming her a “Black Joy Blazer.” This original series recognizes people in our communities who light our paths with cleansing joy, brave joy, revolutionary joy, and Black joy. No one is more deserving of that recognition than the one and only Ms. Nikki Giovanni.
She speaks candidly about what’s at stake during this fraught political moment when home-grown white supremacists have removed their masks in the highest halls of power. She reminds us of our sacred duty as artists in times of peril, and, perhaps, most poignantly, she shares her thoughts on what it means to be remembered. She is both vulnerable and strong, showing us, yet again, that those two ways of being are not mutually exclusive. Throughout the interview, she is fully cognizant of her role as a beloved elder and sister in the fight for Black liberation. Even as she stares her mortality in the face, she remains a living reminder that Black people in general, and Black women specifically, not only embody joy but manifest it.
Source: Antonio Dickey / Getty
More than one of our literary gods, Nikki Giovanni has mothered entire generations of Black women thinkers, writers, poets, and educators into existence—and back home to ourselves when we got lost. She taught us that we are divine beings full of love, light, and power beyond our own imaginings. To be Black and woman, like Nikki Giovanni; to be a writer, like Nikki Giovanni is a gift, a responsibility, and an honor.
Renée Watson, a New York Times bestselling author whom Giovanni considered her daughter, shares with NewsOne that joy was a cornerstone of her beloved friend and mentor’s work.
“A cornerstone of Nikki’s poems is the celebration of everyday Black life, Watson said. “I love her ode, Knoxville, Tennessee, where she writes of the simple joys of summertime and her love poems that speak of tucking in a loved one, cooking for them, or simply walking together in the rain. These simple examples of joyful moments are reminders that there is much to be grateful for, that the ordinary and mundane are actually daily mercies and miracles—the miracle being that we can still laugh and love even after all we’ve been through.
Source: Renée Watson
“When Nikki wrote, ‘Black love is Black wealth,’ she was telling Black folks as long as we have self-love, we have all we need,” Watson continued.” As long as we have self-love, we have revolution. And this revolution is a grounding strength, an inward knowing that joy is not happiness, is not based on the external, but rather joy is a choice to cultivate gratitude. Nikki’s work, always, is a reminder that Black joy is resistance.”
For Watson, “love and joy are connected,” and Giovanni loved.
Source: Renée Watson / Renée Watso
“The way Nikki showed her love was through the handwritten letters she mailed me and the home-cooked meals where she showed off her culinary skills,” Watson remembers fondly. “A memory I go back to over and over again is that when my mother died, Nikki checked on me every day for 30 days by phone call or text. In the midst of my deepest sadness, she showed up and made love a tangible thing, sharing with me how she made it through the loss of her grandmother and so many other women she loved. She shared with me that part of what got her through grief was sharing stories and committing to live a life her grandmother would be proud of.
“And so, we shared stories and laughed and talked about the new writing projects we were dreaming up,” Watson continued. “And sometimes we just sat and cried together or watched Jeopardy or listened to jazz. Though she was a master of words, it was her actions that spoke most to me. She lived her love, she personified joy, and she brought her love and joy to me in practical ways that I am still feeling, that I will forever hold on to.”
Shani-Angela Hervey, a fierce advocate for social justice and close friend of Giovanni’s, shared that the prolific poet’s legacy is one of Black joy and sisterhood.
Source: Shani-Angela Hervey
“Nikki Giovanni is a Black poet, writer and activist whose work has shaped generations of Black thought, resistance, and celebration. Her voice rings clear with defiance, love, and an unwavering commitment to Black liberation,” Hervey said.
“From her first works like Black Feeling, Black Talk, to her most recent, A Good Cry, she has woven the tapestry of Black life—its struggles, its triumphs, and most importantly, its joy. Nikki’s work is Black Joy as a form of protest — a revolutionary insistence on love, laughter, and self-determination in a world that often seeks to deny them. She is honest about love in all its forms—romantic, familial, communal—with a rawness that refuses to sanitize the Black experience.
“In Ego-Tripping, Nikki celebrates a divine self in a cosmic, larger-than-life way, and gives Black women an origin story that cannot be ignored,” Hervey continued. “Her poems make readers understand that being Black is not just about surviving, but about fighting, dancing, dreaming, and being extraordinarily alive.”
Source: Shani-Angela Hervey
For Hervey, her relationship with Giovanni was both literary and spiritual.
“Even though we are different in age, I see myself in her boldness, in her disobedience to respectability, in her insistence that we are enough as we are,” she said. “She is both mentor and mirror, always reminding me that I too have the power of my voice.
“Our friendship, whether she knows it or not, means that I am never writing alone. I am part of a succession that she has created — whenever I write my own truths when I put my joys and anguish on paper. As a Gen X Black woman who is still navigating the literary landscape, she reminds me that I don’t have to wait for permission to tell my story. Nikki is not just a poet; she is proof that Black women’s words matter, that our joy is sacred and that our voices can shake the world.”
Giovanni said many times that we only die when we’re forgotten. And, if that be the case, she will outlive us all.
Please watch the indomitable Nikki Giovanni, our Black Joy Blazer, share words of fire, light, love and revolution joy in the video below. Be encouraged. Be inspired. And lean deeply and fully into a revolutionary Black joy that this world did not give us and certainly can’t strip away.
SEE ALSO:
9 Nikki Giovanni Quotes To Light Your Way
7 Nikki Giovanni Poems That Will Lift Your Spirits
Black Joy Blazers: Nikki Giovanni On Black History, Banned Books And Finding Joy In Resistance
was originally published on
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