Quote

We black women are the single group in the West intact. And anybody can see we're pretty shaky. We are, however (all praises), the only group that derives its identity from itself.

Nikki Giovanni

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Nikki Giovanni
Age: 81
Born: 1943
Born: June 7
Poet
Teacher
Writer
Knoxville
Tennessee
Yolande Cornelia Giovanni
Jr
Black
Group
Women
Identity
West
However
Shaky
Anybody
Derives
Groups
Praises
Single
Intact
Pretty
Praise

More quotes by Nikki Giovanni

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[My] Books are like puppies and children: you love each one for different reasons. I don't actually have a favorite because, if I were honest, I'm always more excited about what is coming.
Nikki Giovanni
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We write because we believe the human spirit cannot be tamed and should not be trained.
Nikki Giovanni
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Language instruction should start in the first grade. Writing, also.
Nikki Giovanni
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Art offers sanctuary to everyone willing to open their Hearts as well as their Eyes.
Nikki Giovanni
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Don't want to be near you for the thoughts we share but the words we never have to speak.
Nikki Giovanni
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Black Americans should be given credit for finding probably the perfect weapon the weapon of the song. And that song continues. Most holocausts don't, so they have this bitterness left over. The phenomenon of the world, as far as Black Americans are considered, is that we are not a bitter people.
Nikki Giovanni
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I have not tried to tell the people anything. I have shared my views with the people but I have not tried to lead or correct them, assuming they need correction.
Nikki Giovanni
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Facts are only tools to gain control over yourself and other people.
Nikki Giovanni
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My work is a part of me and I know it. I have no reason to try to pick one part of me out from the rest. I only see my work, or rather I should say I see my work only telling my part of the human experience.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am so hip even my errors are correct
Nikki Giovanni
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I knew Stokely [Carmichael] and them, but when you got to that, you saw that Nina Simone started to take up their burden. She started to preach for them. She was taking on the burden of I want to tell the people.
Nikki Giovanni
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You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people. It's strange that the only time the major press talks about them is when someone gets killed or does drugs or something yet these are the same press people who made heroes out of the Mafia and other crooks, you know.
Nikki Giovanni
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We [Black people] have always used our creativity to battle and we're not the only ones. Black Americans are certainly leaders in that simply because we were denied education and dealt with enforced illiteracy. But people seem to always forget that literacy is not the only way of learning things or conveying knowledge.
Nikki Giovanni
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We have a world to conquer...one person at a time...starting with ourselves.
Nikki Giovanni
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Libraries...house our dreams.
Nikki Giovanni
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I am proud of the hip hop generation. They are good business people and, actually, good people.
Nikki Giovanni
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We believe 'Peter Rabbit' because Beatrix Potter believes it. You have to.
Nikki Giovanni
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Poetry is the most mistaught subject in any school because we teach poetry by form and not by content.
Nikki Giovanni
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We just didn't put any pressure on each other, and I think that everybody needs somebody, and I didn't do it to try to do it it's what we [with Nina Simone] were to each other.
Nikki Giovanni