In the following essay, McDowell argues for a more comprehensive criticism of Giovanni's work, claiming that it is generally misinterpreted and poorly assessed due to earlier criticism biased by "the critics' misperceptions, their insistence on half-truths, or their … political and personal convictions."

In the following essay, McDowell argues that critics have failed to adequately analyze the whole of Giovanni's poetry.

In the following essay, Cook discusses the theme of place in Giovanni's poems, arguing that Giovanni's most important poems are not the early, militant poems, but those which are greatly concerned with place, home and family.

In the essay below, Cook considers the influence of the Southern writing tradition on Giovanni's writing.

In the following interview, Giovanni discusses her work's development, considers the effects of race and gender on writing, and provides insight into her own creative process.

In the following interview, Giovanni discusses her travels to Africa, the role of the writer in society, and writers she admires.

In the following excerpt, Juhasz reads Giovanni's poetry as a record of her attempts to meld her roles as a black, a woman, and a poet by defining those roles "in terms of two primary factors … : power and love. "

In the following essay, Boldridge explores the relation between Miguel de Cervantes's character Don Quixote and Giovanni's world view.

In the following essay, Harris regards Giovanni as "a good popular poet" whose work responds to the complex events of her time yet sometimes suffers from a lack of a more complete realization.

In the following essay, Bell analyzes African-American poetry, discussing its influences and its agenda.

In the following essay based on an interview with Giovanni, Stokes remarks on Giovanni's home and family.

In the interview below, Giovanni offers her views on modern culture and writing.

In the following review of Racism 101, Crockett argues that Giovanni accurately reflects African-American views on race.

In the following review of Sacred Cows … and Other Edibles, McDermott criticizes Giovanni's monotony and lack of wit.

In the following review of Gemini, Duffy argues that Giovanni has crafted both a memoir and a manifesto about her life.

[Black Feeling, Black Talk, Black Judgment] is a record of a time and an involvement and awareness and activism which marks the late Sixties as special. Nikki Giovanni is a special poet for this special time—a revolutionary one…. She records [the spirit of time and place] in a special way evoking images largely through cataloguing. Black feelings, talk, judgments taking pains to particularize details; through her black magic, she conjures up visions and spirit of time, although she seems to re...

[Even though the content of Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet] is contemporary, it is written from a personal as well as a personalist view. Personal, meaning interpreting perceptions from the framework of one's own experience, primarily, and subjecting them to a formal ideology only as a secondary consequence. Personalist, meaning that the ultimate value of any act or movement is directly proportional to one's own self-actualiza...

Gemini is a collection of miscellaneous essays—roughly half of them autobiographical; the rest, critical and political…. Miss Giovanni allows her sense of commitment to lead her into making some rather foolish assertions. Thus, in one anthropologically dubious chapter, called "The Weather as Cultural Determiner," she asserts that Africa's balmy climate established in the genes of all blacks a harmony with nature that whites, originating in the cold North, can never hope to...

In the following review, Rosenberg praises Giovanni's style and skill in Ego-Tripping.

[My House] by title implies both a kind of freedom to deal in lyrics with things which affect the poet personally and intimately and a projection of the mind and feelings of the poet from her center of being. The poems that strike me as the best in the group are those which involve love, dedications to certain personalities, personal fury, and relatives…. Something of the personal voice comes through in ["My House"]…. (p. 111) "When I Die" catches up and projects th...

Nikki Giovanni in [The Women and the Men offers an unfortunate example] of the dangers of success. [She is] self-consciously determined to speak as [a black woman of her] African past and of [her] present loves. [She fails] because the public voice drowns out the private emotion. In fairness, Nikki Giovanni retains in some of her new work the innocent clarity that marked her earlier poems. "Kidnap Poem" is a delight: "if I were a poet / I'd kidnap you…." And in �...

[Get] next to Black Judgement …, a book of poems by the sister from Cincinnati that's one more fast number. (p. 83) Enjoy the guts of [Giovanni] on her journey into "Adulthood," a poem that acts like a fifth of iodine on an open wound with its raw power….