Nikki Giovanni, born Yolande Cornelia “Nikki” Giovanni, passed away on December 9, 2024. She was a poet, author of children’s and adult books, educator, and commentator.
Her children’s books included I Am Loved, A Library, Hip Hop Speaks to Children, Rosa, and The Sun Is So Quiet. Rosa earned her a Caldecott Honor Award and a Coretta Scott King Book Award. She received an NAACP Image Award and National Book Award.
Following the shooting deaths at Virginia Tech in April, 2017 (in which 32 people were killed), she wrote the following statement: “WE are VIRGINIA TECH”. Giovanni knew many of the victims and the shooter, from her time teaching at that institution.
We are Virginia Tech.
We are sad today, and we will be sad for quite a while. We are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to stand tall tearlessly, we are brave enough to bend to cry, and we are sad enough to know that we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did nothing to deserve it, but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, neither do the invisible children walking the night away to avoid being captured by the rogue army, neither does the baby elephant watching his community being devastated for ivory, neither does the Mexican child looking for fresh water, neither does the Appalachian infant killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands, being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokie Nation embraces our own and reaches out with open hearts and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong, and brave, and innocent, and unafraid. We are better than we think and not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imaginations and the possibilities. We will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears and through all our sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail. We will prevail. We will prevail. We are Virginia Tech.
Remembering Nikki Giovanni — ‘We Go Forward With a Sanity and a Love’, an episode of the podcast On Being with Krista Tippett, includes an interview with Giovanni in 2016.
