A Civil Rights activist and world-renowned poet, Nikki Giovanni's journey led her from Knoxville, TN to the forefront of the late 1960s Black Arts Movement. On the path she fell in love with hospitals and space, befriended gangsters and nuns, and determined that writing is not about keeping score - but it is about making a point.

Transcript

Megan Hayes: Yolande Cornelia Giovanni, who was dubbed Nikki as a baby by her sister, is a world-renowned civil rights activist, author, educator, and orator. Born in Appalachia on June 7, 1943, she is the child of Knoxville College graduates Gus and Yolande Giovanni. She grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio and she and her sister spent summers in Knoxville with grandparents Professor J.B. and Lavinia Watson. Giovanni gained early admittance to Fisk University, her grandfather's alma mater, and graduated with honors in 1968. She soon after published her first book of poetry, Black Feeling, Black Talk, which led to her being called the princess of black poetry. She holds the position of University Distinguished Professor in the Department of English at Virginia Tech and has been hailed as one of the dazzling flames that lights the path to wisdom for all who desire to take the walk.

Megan Hayes: She has been recognized as a national treasure and categorized as one of Oprah Winfrey's 25 Living Legends. Giovanni has earned seven NAACP Image Awards, a Grammy nomination, the Rosa L. Parks Woman of Courage Award, and the Langston Hughes Medal for Poetry and has been a finalist for the National Book Award. She has authored three New York Times and Los Angeles Times best-sellers. She is a mother and a grandmother who likes to cook, travel, and dream. Dr. Nikki Giovanni, welcome to Appalachian State University and welcome to Sound Effects.

Nikki Giovanni: Oh, I'm glad to be back.

Megan Hayes: We're so glad to have you. One of the things that I've heard many times is that you're the princess of black poetry. How did you come to be known as the princess of black poetry?

Nikki Giovanni: I tell you I have no idea. I don't even remember how it came up. I mean I guess I was too young to be a queen. I don't know. Everybody comes up with ... But I had nothing ... It wasn't me.

Megan Hayes: Right. Right.

Nikki Giovanni: And it wasn't what ultimately would become my people.

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: Do you remember at what point people started saying that about you?

Nikki Giovanni: I think that my greatest gift is that I really don't remember things. I forget. I let things go. So I don't. A poem that I will share today, Ego Tripping, when I first printed that, published it in a book, the New York Times put it in ... It was on the front page of their art section and it was illustrated. I have it ... I had cut it out and I've kept it forever. I think it was in '68 or '69. That I know.

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: But I try not to ... I've known a lot of famous people and they've let their career and their life and their talent control them, and they've ruined their lives in many, many respects. They have become unhappy because they're trying to live up to something that doesn't begin to make sense. So a lot of times, people will say, "Oh, I saw you 20 years ago," and I'm like, "Yeah, yeah." I don't remember and I don't have any reason to. I actually don't remember Ego Tripping. I’m very close to remembering it, but I don't actually remember it. If you don't let your past just sort of go, you'll always be stuck with trying to recreate it. We've lost quite a few people because they're trying to be something that somebody else who doesn't know them thinks they should be. Does that make sense?

Megan Hayes: It sure does.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: Yeah, for sure. Well since you referenced it, this might be a good time to read Ego Tripping. Would you be willing to do that for us?

Nikki Giovanni: I'd be delighted.

Megan Hayes: I would be delighted to hear it.

Nikki Giovanni: I was born in the Congo. I walked to the Fertile Crescent and built the Sphinx. I designed a pyramid so tough that a star that only glows every 100 years falls into the center, giving divine perfect light. I am bad. I sat on the throne drinking nectar with Allah. I got hot and sent an ice age to Europe to cool my thirst. My oldest daughter is Nefertiti. The tears from my birth pains created the Nile. I am a beautiful woman. I gazed on the forest and burned out the Sahara Desert. With a packet of goat's meat and a change of clothes, I crossed it in two hours. I am a gazelle so swift, so swift you can't catch me. For a birthday present when he was three, I gave my son Hannibal an elephant. He gave me Rome for Mother's Day. My strength flows ever on.

Nikki Giovanni: My son Noah built new/ark and I stood proudly at the helm as we sailed on a soft summer day. I turned myself into myself and was Jesus. Men intone my loving name. All praises. All praises. I am the one who would save. I sowed diamonds in my background. My bowels deliver uranium. The filings from my fingernails are semiprecious jewels. On a trip north, I caught a cold and blew my nose, giving oil to the Arab world. I am so hip even my errors are correct. I sailed west to reach east and had to round off the earth as I went. The hair from my head thinned and gold was laid across three continents. I am so perfect, so divine, so ethereal, so surreal, I cannot be comprehended except by my permission. I mean I can fly like a bird in the sky.

Megan Hayes: That made me tear up a little bit.

Nikki Giovanni: I love that. Oh, thank you. It's a lot of fun.

Megan Hayes: Oh, it is a lot of fun and it's so much fun to hear you read it.

Nikki Giovanni: Thank you. Thank you.

Megan Hayes: Thank you.

Nikki Giovanni: That was a fun poem. You know how you write something? And the first time I read this poem though, it was in Boston. I was at BU. That's something I remember. I read it and people, kids, and they were standing up, "Yeah." I was thinking, "Wow. Maybe there's something else." I read it the next time and it was like, "Wow. Maybe there's more to this poem than I know," because I was just writing it as one of the "I am.” One of the things that you're involved in when you're doing these things, you don't really know what you're having until you have it. If you're intelligent, you go on. That was an awkward way of saying it ... But that's what you try to do.

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: You enjoy it and then you go on and see what's coming next. So even now if you threw all my books up in the air, it would be very easy to tell which came first and which came last because I've continued to grow. I think growth is important.

Megan Hayes: Is it fun to go back and relive some of those older poems?

Nikki Giovanni: I don't do that much, going back and ... Every now and then ... I haven't reread Ego Tripping in a long time. I mostly continue. This is history and I think it's quite true. I think it's kind of wonderful to think that of course I can fly like a bird in the sky. I'm a space freak and there's an awful lot of space in all of my books. There's a lot of space and a lot of quilts. As somebody else pointed out recently, it's an awful lot of food.

Megan Hayes: Yeah.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah. Well I like to cook. My granddaughter came down last ... Well I live in Virginia. Came down last year and I thought, "Well I'm a grandmother and I have responsibilities here," because when I saw her when she was a little girl, she would bounce on the bed and you'd read books to her and things like that. I said, Kai, we have to teach you how to cook chitlins." My other cousin was like, "Oh, God. I hate those things." I said, "No, she's got to learn." So when Kai was down, I taught her to turn them inside out and pull the ... Kai will eat anything so I was really proud of that. So we sat there and we ate the chitlins. I only have one other girl cousin, and Allison won't eat chitlins. Jenny won't eat chitlins. They were like, "Ew, we're not going to eat them." Kai and I were looking at them like, "We don't care."

Megan Hayes: There you go. Pass it on.

Nikki Giovanni: Oh, yeah. You've got to.

Megan Hayes: For sure. Can you talk for a moment about your Appalachian roots and influences and what they've meant to your work and your life?

Nikki Giovanni: Well I'm a Knoxvillianby birth. I think that the Appalachian community is being robbed right now of its great importance in American history. Well, I dislike Trump and dislike would be just such a nice word to use. I hate the way that he's teaching people to hate. If you look at the Appalachian Trail, if we start it right there in Alabama, you start a little bit further over and you come all the way up, you come up to Maine, what that trail is going to do, these slaves who were escaping are going to come up and so it's two things going on. The white people who are living here are being a friend to those escaping for freedom, but we also have to remember that the reason they are there is that the British were kicking them out. They wanted to get rid of the Scots . That's why everybody's Mac something. They wanted to get rid of the Scots and wanted to get rid of the Irish. We have to remember you could go to Boston and I collect things, but there's a sign, used to be signs in Boston, "No Irish or Negros need apply."

Nikki Giovanni: So we know that these two communities had a lot in common. I think that when you look at the great history of Appalachia, we know that the Civil War would be, would have been lost if West Virginia had not broken up, then Virginia would have gone over to the Ohio River. It would have changed the war. So in many, many respects, West Virginia saved the nation.

Nikki Giovanni: Of course, there's a lot of hatred of Appalachians and there are stories to be told in Appalachia, stories of Appalachian women, the quilts that they hung out. One of the reasons that the enslaved who were escaping knew that this was a safe house is that the Appalachian women because the men weren't doing it. They were working the fields. It's the Appalachian women hung quilts out. So there's a lot of great history here that keeps being smothered because they're trying to make white people be ashamed of the fact that they stood up for the Constitution. I'm always sorry to hear that because these are great people. They're great and they should be celebrated.

Megan Hayes: The poem, If I Have to Hospital, speaks a bit to your Appalachian connection. Would you mind reading it for us?

Nikki Giovanni: I'd be delighted. That's the truth because to me, I've had enough. I've had cancer. So I've been in the hospital, and hospitals remind me of my grandmother.

Nikki Giovanni: If I have to hospital, please let it be in Appalachia with nasal voices and soft smiles. Are the hospitals so efficiently run because of the Hatfields and the McCoys? A lot of practice time? My arm is tattooed by a nurse who can't find my vein. I am here because I can't remember. A mild seizure like a little bit of in love being palpitations. I don't know why. We don't know why. The medicine for love is sex. The medicine for seizure is ... Somehow, it doesn't balance. Hospitals are like grandmothers. How's my baby this morning? And they give you food you don't want to eat and needles that hurt and you smile because you know they know you want to get well without somehow having to leave them.

Megan Hayes: Thank you.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah. I was in the hospital. Well I had a seizure. I had lung cancer and a couple of years later, I had a seizure. My mom was still here when I had the lung cancer, and she came, the family and my mother and my sister were here. They came to take me out of the hospital. "We're going to take you home. You're going to be all right. We're going to take you home." I was actually crying. Momma said, "Well why are you crying?" I said, "I'm going to have to leave." I love hospitals. If I have to hospital, please let it be in Appalachia.

Megan Hayes: Yeah.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: Yeah. So I'm the daughter of a teacher and an artist and I think it takes incredible courage to do both, but I'd like to ask you about being an artist and in particular when you knew that you had, I guess, made it. What was it? When did you realize you could do this work that you loved even if it wasn't an exact moment? What was that feeling? Because I think a lot of young artists would like to hear also how you made that happen?

Nikki Giovanni: I think a lot of people have a different idea of what's important. Again, I'm not all that humble, but the reality is still the career I have chosen, if I may use that, is one in which you're never going to be recognized. Most of the great classics are 200 and 300 years old. The people who wrote them have no idea they wrote classics. We can go back 1000 years or so. The great philosophers had no idea that we'd still be quoting them. If you're going to be a writer, you have to let that go. The kids today are thinking, "Oh, I want to be a writer. I want a number one best-seller." Well most of the crap that's number one best-seller is not worth reading. Nobody remembers it. I teach at Virginia Tech. We start school the day after Martin Luther King holiday, and I will go into class and I will say to them, because I teach writing class, "What's the number one best-seller in America?" Do you know that not one of my students will know.

Megan Hayes: I don't know.

Nikki Giovanni: You see what I'm saying?

Megan Hayes: Yeah.

Nikki Giovanni: So why would you try to do something that you don't even know what it is? Why don't you try to say rather, "I want to write something that is meaningful to me that's the best that I can do?" Anne Frank didn't know she was writing a great book. You don’t know what your doing is going to be what it is. So, why would you try to do something like that? This is not football or basketball. This is not a game where you get points. We’re trying to make a point about the world in which we live.

Megan Hayes: From a young age, you were encouraged to be an activist by your grandmother. You've certainly seen and taken part in key moments in the history of the Civil Rights Movement. I'm curious about what similarities and differences you see in the activism of today and the activism of the '50s and '60s.

Nikki Giovanni: I think the kids do what they want to do, and I've been asked just because of my age I'm sure, "What do you think about the Me Too Movement or the Black Lives Matter Movement?" I think the kids do what ... We did what we wanted to do, and people like Roy Wilkins who was then the head of NAACP, he didn't like what Martin Luther King was doing with marching, going around gathering crowds. He thought that was a bad idea. Every generation thinks that the younger generation is doing the wrong thing. It's the nature of what it is. I think that the kids are doing a great job and that's the truth. I have my Black Lives Matter t-shirt and I've worked with them when they've asked me to and I've been very proud to. Every generation also knows what they want to get done.

Nikki Giovanni: So I think the rest of us ... I mean for me, what's important is that I get my champagne and sit in my backyard with my fish. We look at the world ... And I'm saying we. I'm 76. We look at the world different and we've changed the world. My generation has to remind the younger generation because we grew up in segregation and we took segregation down. So what we handed the next generation, my son's generation, for example, is an unsegregated world or a desegregated world, however you want to look at it, but it doesn't mean a world without racism.

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: So there's still a struggle with how do you get rid of your basic racism. Of course I think that a lot of hatred is being encouraged right now and I think that that's not a good idea. I hate to see people just going around shooting people for no reason. I think guns are a bad idea no matter what anybody says. "Well if I didn't have a gun ..." No, none of that. Guns are a bad idea and we should have been moving beyond that. I'm sorry that the United Nations doesn't work any better than it does because I think that we all should recognize this is planet Earth and it's very, very easy to see that if we don't find a way to get along, we're going to lose it. But I think what will be interesting because I'll be gone is who's going to be the last human beings that going to sort of look around and realize, "Oh, it didn't work. This experiment didn't work."

Nikki Giovanni: If God called and said, "Hi, you know, Nik, what do you think? Should the humans continue?" I'd have to be honest with him because He's God and, "No, God it didn't work. You might look at another planet. You got nine here in this galaxy. You might want to look at another galaxy because this isn't working." I think it's a shame because I don't think that in 2020 we should be afraid of each other, I don't think that we should hate each other. I just think that we should be a little further along. I really do. This whole idea of "I'm afraid of somebody" or "I want this property to be mine," Earth is too small. Speaking of my granddaughter, she's a great kid. We're going up to the Arctic Circle.

Megan Hayes: Oh, wow.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah. Yeah. I'm so excited because we have discovered, we, being the scientists, have discovered a worm 20,000 feet under the ice there. I wanted to see the worm. Kai says, "Grandma Nik, are you still in love with the worm?" I'm still in love with the worm. I said, "Kai, I'm going to go up the Arctic Circle if you'd like to go."

Megan Hayes: Oh, my gosh.

Nikki Giovanni: She goes, "Yes, I would like to go." So she and our cousin Allison and my friend Jenny, we're all going up to the Arctic Circle with the BBC which is really, really lucky because the BBC has a nuclear sub. It's just a little fun nuclear sub. So we'll be able to go down to see how far down we can go.

Megan Hayes: Oh, my gosh. How incredible.

Nikki Giovanni: I'm excited. I'm really, really excited. I really am to have Kai because it's not something you're going to do again.

Megan Hayes: That's going to be amazing.

Megan Hayes: Well you have a bat named after you. Maybe they'll name the worm after you. That could be really cool.

Nikki Giovanni: That would be really ... I do have ... Nobody knows that. I have a new book that'll be out in the fall and it's called Make Me Rain. If you're a jazz fan, you know it as it's an old jazz tune. I have to write or I was saying to Rachel, my editor, "I'm going to redo my bio." One of the things I want to put on the bio, I want the bat on the bio.

Megan Hayes: Oh, it's so cool. It's like you're a superhero.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: I love it.

Nikki Giovanni: I like bats. I thought, "Yeah, let's put the bat on." You know Toni Morrison. Toni won the Nobel. When she did, the Washington Post called me. They called a bunch of people, but they called me and said, "Would you give us a quote on Ms. Morrison?" I said, "Well I'm really thrilled first of all, which I am because I love Toni." I said, "But a lot of people have won the Nobel for Literature, but I have a bat named after me." This reporter said, "You're kidding?" I said, "No, I got a bat named after me." So she looked it all up because the bat had just recently ... Dr. Baker at the University of Texas, that's what he did. The bat is in Chile. Chile I guess it is. If you go back and pull up the Washington Post, one side will say, "Morrison wins Nobel for Literature. Giovanni has bat."

Megan Hayes: I love it.

Nikki Giovanni: Toni said, "You're crazy." I said, "Yeah, probably am, but everybody got what you got. I got something ..." That's one reason you love her because she was just a special person. Yeah.

Megan Hayes: I had the incredibly good fortune to interview Julian Bond the year that he died, and I recently saw part of an interview that he did with you. One thing that struck me in that interview is you talked about making mistakes and picking up and moving forward. In that context, you were talking about writing. He said the same in the context of talking about activism. So I was just wondering if you could talk a little bit about just the significance of making mistakes.

Nikki Giovanni: Well actually there's one part if you wanted to be like ... I don't even know what the word would be... “about it.” There's no such thing as a mistake. It's only a way that you learn something. There's a reason pencils have erasers. It's not because you make mistakes because that's the end of that and you learn something. We all loved Julian by the way. Julian was a wonderful, wonderful man and we miss him a lot. I don't remember the interview, but I'm sure that he and I would both think the same thing. Julian and of course John Lewis and we're worried about John, John is our good friend. We're very much worried about how he feels. And Bob Moses. I don't know if you know Dr. Moses, a mathematical genius. He's up at MIT. Bob is still with us.

Nikki Giovanni: You just look at the courage of those young men, just looking at what they did to stand up to help change America, the belief that they had and I guess maybe even I should say, “we” because I had the belief too, but I didn't have, I didn't have the kind of courage that they had, and the belief we had in the Constitution and in making the Constitution live. That was just a wonderful thing. We'll be in Atlanta celebrating John. I was so glad when they called, when Linda Smith called me. She said, "We're going to celebrate John." I said, "I'll be there if I have to walk. I'll be there," because you just hate it that everybody waits until you're dead and then they say what a wonderful person you were. It kind of makes a little more sense to do it while you're alive-

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: ... and you can hear.

Megan Hayes: Sure.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: Yeah. In recent years, you've moved into a phase of life during which your matriarchs and many of your mentors have died and you became the matriarch.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: What has it meant to you to take on that role?

Nikki Giovanni: Excuse me for laughing. I was the baby in the family.

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: I looked around. Well my father had died, but then my mother died in June and my sister died in July and my Aunt Anne died in that October. Then Agnes and I who were the babies in the family in the Watson line were both saying like, "Oh, my goodness." Then Ag died and without realizing, my cousin Allison called and said, "Well what are we going to do?" I really forget. "What are we going to do about ..." I said, "Well why are you calling?" We called her Pat. I said, "Pat, why are you calling me?" She said, "Well, you're the elder." It was like, "Let me go pour myself a glass of wine-"

Megan Hayes: Right.

Nikki Giovanni: ... because it dawned on me. I all of a sudden became the oldest person and you look around and it's not difficult like, "Oh, my God. This is such a burden." It's just that all of a sudden you realize, "Oh, I have responsibilities," that there are things that you never had to think about that now you have to say, "Well I wonder how she'd do this. I wonder." So when Pat calls and it's like, "Well I need somebody to come ..." You can tell when people ... "I'll be out. I'll be on the plane." I go out to California to ... All of a sudden you realize, "Oh, I'm the one that's supposed to be the grandmother." I am a grandmother. That's why she's going to the Arctic Circle with us.

Megan Hayes: Yeah.

Nikki Giovanni: She went to ... All of us went down to Antarctica and of course you have to take ... "Pat, you have to come because ..." All of a sudden you realize that, "Oh, I'm the elder."

Megan Hayes: You're the one.

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah, it's very strange.

Megan Hayes: Well I'd like to ask you to read a poem about your mother if you would please. I Married My Mother.

Nikki Giovanni: Oh, yeah. Because when my sister, when my father got sick, I went back home and I lived with Mommy for like 20 years. We moved to Virginia together. All of us moved to Virginia together.

Nikki Giovanni: I know crying is a skill. I automatically wipe my eyes even though I know crying is a skill. Maybe I will learn. My mother did when she thought I was asleep. I think my sister did sleep, but sleep is as difficult to me as crying. I laugh easily and I smile and withhold any true feelings except once I fell in love with my eighth-grade teacher and spent most of my life trying to feel safe again. Though maybe I'm safe now after almost 30 years which is as long as I lived with my mother. Maybe that's not a poem. Maybe that's something else. Maybe I just wanted to show my father that he needn't be cruel. Maybe I just enjoyed buying the house she had to live in, showing her she should have married me instead of him. Or maybe since we will all soon be gone, I should be happy I found my mother and someone else who loves me. What else really matters?

Nikki Giovanni: That's the truth. I used to say that to mom. I said, "You should have married me?" Gus was cruel, but that'd be a whole discussion. I said, "You should have married me instead of Gus." I called him Gus. I said, "You should have married me instead of Gus." She would say, "Well baby, if I hadn't married Gus, I couldn't have gotten you." I said, "Well we need to study how human egg needs to be able to come out. Everything else can get an egg out. Chicken gets an egg out." I love the blue egg. Don't you just love the blue eggs?

Megan Hayes: Yeah, I do. Well my final question for you, and I appreciate all the time that you've spent with me today, is that you've had so many successes in your life. Of what are you the most proud?

Nikki Giovanni: I'm proud that I'm still sane. I think that sanity is important. I'm proud that I have enough sense to love the people who love me and I dislike the people who dislike me. So I think that that keeps me sane. I have not many friends, but the few I have are good. I'm proud of that. I really do like my career. My son is a good man and there are not that many good men, period. Thomas is a good father. He's divorced from my granddaughter's mother which is good because if it doesn't work, you should get rid of it. Kai is a nice kid. So you're just glad that you're alive and there's a song, "I'm glad that I'm living and lucky to be." So it's not pitiful or humble.

Nikki Giovanni: I didn't ever want to be rich. I just want to be able to pay my bills, the things that people want. My car is 11 years old. They call you know. I drive a Beemer and they call you and say, "You really should buy a new ..." I say, "Why don't you people stop this?" The car I had before that I kept for 20 years. So I'm going to keep this car until I don't drive anymore. The house is paid for. I like my car. My dog gets his shots. What more could I want?

Megan Hayes: What more can you want?

Nikki Giovanni: Yeah.

Megan Hayes: Well Dr. Nikki Giovanni, what a pleasure it has been to have you here today. Gosh, then an honor to have you on our campus. I just want to thank you for sharing your thoughts and sharing your spirit and being with us on this campus.

Nikki Giovanni: I'm glad to be back. I've been here a couple of times. This is not my first time.

Megan Hayes: Yeah. Yeah.

Nikki Giovanni: Thank you. I think that we in Appalachia are very important and I'll be glad when we reclaim that great history of ours here in Appalachia.

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