Nikki Giovanni, a fierce and lyrical voice whose work illuminated love, liberation, and the unyielding power of self-expression has died.

Tributes are now pouring in from across the country, as admirers and friends warn the passing of a literary legend.

Writer, activist, and public intellectual, Nikki Giovanni was an unmissable and unmistakable

presence in American culture for more than 50 years.

I'm not ashamed of our history because I know there is more to come.

Her poetry and prose published in more than two dozen volumes, grappled with race, sex, gender, and politics.

And her commitment to fighting injustice inspired generations of Americans from all walks of life.

You cannot be afraid and you cannot be worried about who does and who doesn't like what you do,

because there's always somebody's not going to like it.

If nobody doesn't like it, something's wrong with it. Born Yolanda Cornelia Giovanni Jr. in 1943, Giovanni grew up in Cincinnati. At 15,

she fled a turbulent family life and a father who was abusive to her mother.

I shouldn't say this on the radio, I guess. But it was clear that either I was going to kill him or I had to move.

And so I decided to move.

If I dreamed natural dreams.

By the late 1960s, she had again moved to the Northeast, publishing militant, artful poetry that quickly made her a leading figure of the black arts movement.

And a fiery feminist counterpoint to the machismo she found in certain pockets of the civil rights movement.

In 1971, in a now iconic interview with James Baldwin, Giovanni, then just 28 years old,

spoke to the problems she saw in the way some black women were treated in relationships.

Why are you going to be truthful with me when you lie to everybody else?

You lied when you smiled at that cracker down the job, right?

Lott of me, smile. Treat me the same way you would treat him.

I can't treat you the way I treat him.

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