I’ve been unable to shake thoughts of the loss of poet, activist, and life-force Nikki Giovanni who left this world just over a month ago. While many other events from the past two or three months might shake the world more profoundly in an immediate sense, her absence looms large for me. I’ll mostly let Nikki be Nikki in her own words and I’ve included some video below catching her as she reads and riffs. Please watch them.
She’s important to Knoxville and, specifically, downtown Knoxville for a number of reasons. Born in Knoxville in 1943, she did not grow up here, but spent formative summers in her grandparents’ home at 400 Mulvaney Street. She also lived with them during high school, attending Austin High. The home, near present-day Cal Johnson Park, on what is now Hall of Fame Drive, was removed by Urban Renewal. One of her most famous essays addresses the topic.
She returned to Knoxville a number of times over the years, eventually receiving recognition from the city and a historical marker near her grandparents’ home. During her lifetime, starting in 1967, she published many books, primarily poetry, but also anthologies and essays. She was awarded twenty-seven honorary degrees, became a professor at several Universities, before spending her last years at Virginia Tech from which she retired in 2022.
Nikki had a singular voice, whether on the written page or in person. She had the power to incite, to inspire, and to anger. She said if everyone was happy with what you are doing, you aren’t doing it well. She fiercely defended the written word and used it like a sword.
I first found her work in 1981 while studying at the University of Florida. I took a dive into poetry and half imagined that’s where I would make my life’s work. Her words startled, confused, and challenged me. As a white male born and raised and living my entire life in the deep south, there were truths to which I had no immediate access. From my childhood onward, I found those ideas and truths which challenged my own understanding in the books I read. She hit at the right time for another round of learning and unlearning for me.
I moved to Knoxville in 1982 not knowing she was born here (it was pre-Internet!). Somehow that information made its way to me and I met her for the first time, I believe, in 1999. She returned to a celebration of Austin-East High School, to be honored, and to give a reading. I felt so fortunate to be able to tell her how her words had kicked my ### in ways that it needed kicking. I think she got a kick out of that. The book she autographed that night remains a treasure.
I encountered her a number of times afterward; a reading at Union Avenue Books, a reading on Market Square and, most recently, at Big Ears. She was always funny, brilliant, incisive, a bit confrontive, but always the push was accompanied by her warm chuckle. She kept a thread going while pursuing asides that were as interesting as the main point. I would have loved to have taken a class with her.
My thoughts about Nikki have been mingled these last weeks with my strong feelings about the book banning across Tennessee and Knox County this fall that preceded her death. As a former school librarian, I’m very concerned that our legislature is now dictating the removal of books from libraries across the state. Book bans historically do not bode well for democracy. Small groups of people are determining the books everyone else’s child will be able to access.
The Tennessee State legislature first passed the Age Appropriate Materials Act in 2022. Last summer they clarified that the law specifically “bans books with sexually explicit imagery . . . explicitly barring materials that contain nudity sexual excitement, sexual conduct or excess violence. It also said materials could not appeal to the “prurient interest.” It made clear that any books containing any of the above should be removed from the shelves of all K-12 libraries, making no distinction between a five-year-old and an eighteen-year-old. They offered little clarification as to whether a kiss, for example, equates to sexual conduct or where to define the line of “excess” in reference to violence.
Each school system was left to grapple with which books might need to be removed and left themselves open to legal sanctions for any that remained. Knox County Schools determined that 48 specific books should be removed from all Knox County School libraries. You can read the full list here, but it includes the incredible The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian by Sherman Alexie, the sixties classic Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (a book my daughter loved in middle school), Wicked by Gregory Maguire (Yes. The one that spawned the Broadway play.), important American classics like Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut and The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, and even children’s books In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak and A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein are deemed too much for high school students.
So, what does Nikki Giovanni have to do with all this? Everything. Words were her talisman. She changed my life and the lives of many people with her words. Did I always like them? No. Did they make me uncomfortable? Of course, they did. Words are meant to challenge, elevate, and force us to think and to grow. She committed her life to that and I’m thankful no one banned the books that I needed to read, hers included, to become a better person and move along this crazy journey.
So this is a farewell to one of the guiding lights of my life. Here’s to you, Nikki. I’ll give you the final word: