An Analysis Of Nikki Giovanni's Poetry

Nikki Giovanni is an American Writer, educator, commentator, and activist. She is one of the most well known African American poets of this century.

“ If you don’t understand yourself, you don’t understand anybody else.” This is one of Nikki most famous quotes that she often says and uses in her poetry. Three main topics that I will cover about Nikki is her early life, her writing career, and her honors and awards. It all started when Nikki was on the go as a child, writing about the things she saw, felt, wanted, and and dreamed about. Nikki was born on June 7, 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her parents were Yolande Cornelia Sr. and her father is Jones “Gus” Giovanni. Nikki moved a lot and her and her sister, Gary Ann, always enjoyed exploring and adventure. Nikki later started school at Oak Avenue School, Cincinnati, Ohio, where she spent

After many decisions, Nikki decided to major in history, but she took many writer’s workshops. Nikki’s style of poem is closest to a free verse, it has no rhyme and most of the poems have no capitalization and are most likely one stanza. Possible themes for Nikki’s poetry are overcoming, hope, faith, equality ,love, friendship and trust, she also writes sometimes about nature. The most definite subject matter in Nikki’s poetry is just people. Nikki alys said that she was most influenced by people and person struggles that Nikki has went through. Nikki’s most well known books are “Rosa”, “The Collected Poetry of Nikki Giovanni,” and “Black Feeling,Black Talk”.

Nikki won three awards for her poetry. First, in 2003, Nikki won the NACCP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Fiction. Then in 2008, she won an American Book Award, which was the biggest highlight of her career. Finally, she won the NACCP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work, Poetry, in 2009, 2010, 2011. Nikki deserved and earned all of these and put much work and effort into everything she