How Did Nikki Giovanni Impact Society

Nikki Giovanni is marked down as one of the 25 most influential poets in history. She is wise, strong, and a fierce black woman who used her experiences with segregation to pilot her success. Even though she isn’t currently well known by the youth, she impacted the entire nation through her poetry, books, music and attitude throughout the black revolution.

Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. was born on June,7 1943 in Knoxville, Tennessee. Her parents, Jones Giovanni and Yolande Watson Giovanni, both weren't rich and did what they could to raise Yolande and her older sister Gary. As a child she spent her summers at her grandparents house after moving from tennessee to ohio with her family. Her parents both got jobs. The father, a probation

Taking in the teachings of her mother and grandmother, she was never the type of girl that couldn't speak her mind. She had an attitude of a steel african drum, powerful and devoted to her own beat. This showed throughout school, at the age of 17 she was attending college at Fisk University for her B.A. and finished with all honors. Even though she already had the gift of writing within her, she didn't start until her college years. She used the fuel from segregation and racism to lift the spirits of her people. Projecting her own opinions and voice, forcing it into the world….and people had no choice but to listen. Everything she did, she did it well which landed her her first job as an associate professor of english in New Jersey and she continued to teach creative writing in 1985. There were many obstacles she had to face being a black woman in the 1960’s, 70’s, and 80’s. The black revolution and Civil Rights movement fueled her fiery poetry and also taught her as much as she taught everyone else. At age 25, she had a son named Thomas Watson Giovanni, she was never married. She believed that marriage was not obliging to women and she simply did not want to be apart of that. The love of her son lightened her poetry and gave it a sweet and loving vibe. Nikki wasn’t just a poet from Cincinnati, she was an

She used her poetry to reach the african american community and it gave them a sense of awareness. Her work was prideful and she, in turn, gave that pride back to her people to give a call to action. She first wrote two books in 1968 that became well known nation wide, and since no one wanted to publish her outspoken, “militant” poetry… she did it herself. She formed her own company and made her own money off of her books, she was very smart. There were mainly two things that influenced her writings, the revolution and her family. You’d never see her writing about anything that wasn’t in relation to those two things. She is free and well spoken and she is