"An unwillingness to try is worse than any failure." - Nikki Giovanni, Poet/Activist/Educator
I would say that Nikki Giovanni tried & succeeded! USAToday calls her prolific and she was, having written essays & poems for adults, poems & picture books for children over the course of a 60-year career. The Washington Post had a fantastic opening sentence about Nikki Giovanni - "a poet of rage & revolution as well as love & longing, who emerged as a fiery voice of Black liberation in the 1960s before honing a more tender, meditative style in bestselling books for children & adults." (Those articles are below, for anyone who is interested in reading them.)
Nikki Giovanni, who explored Black life in verse, dies at 81
Nikki Giovanni dead: Poet and activist was 81
Nikki Giovanni spent her entire adult life teaching the rest of us about the African American Experience through her works. While in college during the 1960s, she was an active member in the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. After graduation, Nikki took an active role in the Black Arts Movement. In 1969, she had her only child & this led to two things. 1) As a single mother, Nikki Giovanni being accused of setting a bad example. 2) She realized that the content children needed was different than the content that adults needed. Raising her son led to a different understanding of the world, causing her to write children's books in addition to her adult level poetry & essays.
Over the course of her career, Nikki Giovanni had her own collections of essays & poems published, she wrote children's books, & she contributed to collections of essays & poems. A link to Goodreads, showing Nikki Giovanni's list of works, is provided here: Books by Nikki Giovanni (Author of Rosa)
The Quincy Public Library has access to most of Nikki Giovanni's works & we would be happy to hand you one of her books, or to put anything on hold that is not housed at QPL.
Nikki Giovanni has an impressive list of awards. Among them are:
A National Endowment of the Arts Fellowship in 1968
National Book Award in 1973
Induction into the Ohio Women's Hall of Fame in 1985
Ohioana Library Award in 1988
NAACP Image Award in 1998, 1999, 2003, 2004, 2009, 2010, 2011
US Senate Certificate of Commendation in 2000
Rosa Parks Women of Courage Award in 2002
Caldecott Honor Book in 2006
Carl Sandburg Literary Award in 2007
Martin Luther King Jr Award for Dedication & Commitment to Service in 2009
Maya Angelous Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017
"Favorite poems are like favorite children. We definitely have them but we never tell as the others would have their feelings hurts." - Nikki Giovanni