There is really only one thing to say to young writers:

Know who you are writing for and to.

I know I write for my Grandmother and the women of The Garden Club and the women of The Book CLub and the women of The Missionary Society and the women who are the Usher Board and the women who cook for the Special Sundays and the women who cleaned the pastor’s house when his wife was in the hospital and all the women who picketed Rich’s Department Store and all the women who sacrificed to send money to Montgomery and especially all the women who cried when Emmett’s body was raised from the river and all the women who decried THIS could not and should not happen again.

Because knowing who you want to be proud of you can make all the difference in the world.

Not at all that I don’t want others to read my poems or essays. I really would like everyone to read or to hear me but I cannot really know what that will mean so I’ll just stick to what I do know.

I want my Grandmother and her friends to look back at my work and be pleased. I want the women who endured slavery and the black laws and all the dreams down the drain because their husbands were riddled with bullets and their sons were lynched and they knew that had to stand because if they didn’t stand then all that death was in vain. So I know only one thing:

It is important to know who
You want to be proud of you.

And then you can know that you have done all you can do. And you can be proud of your work.   

NIKKI GIOVANNI was born in Knoxville, Tennessee, and raised in Ohio. In 1960, she entered Fisk University, where she worked with the school's Writer's Workshop and edited the literary magazine. After receiving her bachelor of arts degree, she organized the Black Arts Festival in Cincinnati and then entered graduate school at the University of Pennsylvania. In her first two collections, Black Feeling, Black Talk (1968) and Black Judgement (1969), Giovanni reflects on the African-American identity. Recently, she has published Blues For All the Changes: New Poems (William Morrow & Company, 1999), Love Poems (1997) and Selected Poems of Nikki Giovanni (1996). Her honors include the NAACP Image Award for Literature in 1998, and the Langston Hughes award for Distinguished Contributions to Arts and Letters in 1996. Several magazines have named Giovanni Woman of the Year, including Essence, Mademoiselle, and Ladies Home Journal. She is currently Professor of English and Gloria D. Smith Professor of Black Studies at Virginia Tech.