ATLANTA — A world-renowned poet, activist and writer has died from cancer. Nikki Giovanni was 81 years old and many say her work will last forever.
“She left us with so much. Like, I don’t think we could pull or extract anything else from her,” Emory University associate professor Bettina Judd said.
Judd was just a Spelman college student when she was pictured with Giovanni, a literary legend, who spent her life uniting folks with her words as a poet, writer and activist.
“She’s quite often attributed as saying Black love is Black wealth,” Judd said.
Judd is now an associate professor of African Studies at Emory University, and she credits Giovanni as a mentor.
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“I think of her truly as a giant and expansive in the ways that she has been able to bring in multiple generations of folks into a kind of legacy of traditional Black poetry and I think she speaks across generations,” Judd said.
Judd believes Giovanni did that when she was a professor at Virginia Tech and spoke to students after a shooting on campus in the early 2000s.
Giovanni had a way with words that won her a Grammy and an NAACP Image Award.
But what Judd will miss most, is how down to Earth she was while willing to help the next generation of writers.
“You know, she’s gonna stop and take a picture with you. She’s gonna talk with you a bit. That’s not always the case and particularly with our most beloved luminaries. And I think that kind of generosity is lost in the way we think of our writing careers or writing life and I hope we don’t lose that. I know we will miss that,” Judd said.
Giovanni had suffered from cancer. This was her third time with it. She died at age 81.
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