San Diego, CA

Nikki Giovanni, poet and literary celebrity, has died at 81

Published

1 year ago

December 10, 2024

Nikki Giovanni, poet and literary celebrity, has died at 81

Nikki Giovanni, the poet, author, educator and public speaker who rose from borrowing money to release her first book to decades as a literary celebrity sharing her blunt and conversational takes on everything from racism and love to space travel and mortality, has died. She was 81.

Giovanni, subject of the prize-winning 2023 documentary “Going to Mars,” died Monday with her life-long partner, Virginia (Ginney) Fowler, by her side, according to a statement from friend and author Renée Watson

“We will forever feel blessed to have shared a legacy and love with our dear cousin,” Allison (Pat) Ragan, Giovanni’s cousin, said in a statement on behalf of the family.

Author of more than 25 books, Giovanni was a born confessor and performer whom fans came to know well from her work, her readings and other live appearances and her years on the faculty of Virginia Tech among other schools. Poetry collections such as “Black Judgement” and “Black Feeling Black Talk” sold thousands of copies, led to invitations from “The Tonight Show” and other television programs and made her popular enough to fill a 3,000-seat concert hall at Lincoln Center for a celebration of her 30th birthday.

In poetry, prose and the spoken word, she told her story. She looked back on her childhood in Tennessee and Ohio, championed the Black Power movement, addressed her battles with lung cancer, paid tribute to heroes from Nina Simone to Angela Davis and reflected on such personal passions as food, romance, family and rocketing into space, a journey she believed Black women uniquely qualified for, if only because of how much they had already survived. She also edited a groundbreaking anthology of Black women poets, “Night Comes Softly,” and helped found a publishing cooperative that promoted works by Gwendolyn Brooks and Margaret Walker among others.

For a time, she was called “The Princess of Black Poetry.”

“All I know is the she is the most cowardly, bravest, least understanding, most sensitive, slowest to anger, most quixotic, lyingest, most honest woman I know,” her friend Barbara Crosby wrote in the introduction to “The Prosaic Soul of Nikki Giovanni,” an anthology of nonfiction prose published in 2003. “To love her is to love contradiction and conflict. To know her is to never understand but to be sure that all is life.”

Giovanni’s admirers ranged from James Baldwin to Teena Marie, who name-checked her on the dance hit “Square Biz,” to Oprah Winfrey, who invited the poet to her “Living Legends” summit in 2005, when other guests of honor included Rosa Parks and Toni Morrison. Giovanni was a National Book Award finalist in 1973 for a prose work about her life, “Gemini.” She also received a Grammy nomination for the spoken word album “The Nikki Giovanni Poetry Collection.”

In January 2009, at the request of NPR, she wrote a poem about the incoming president, Barack Obama:

“I’ll walk the streets

And knock on doors

Share with the folks:

Not my dreams but yours

I’ll talk with the people

I’ll listen and learn

I’ll make the butter

Then clean the churn”

____

Giovanni had a son, Thomas Watson Giovanni, in 1969. She never married the father, because, she told Ebony magazine, “I didn’t want to get married, and I could afford not to get married.” Over the latter part of her life she lived with her partner, Virginia Fowler, a fellow faculty member at Virginia Tech.

She was born Yolande Cornelia Giovanni Jr. in Knoxville, Tennessee, and was soon called “Nikki” by her older sister. She was 4 when her family moved to Ohio and eventually settled in the Black community of Lincoln Heights, outside of Cincinnati. She would travel often between Tennessee and Ohio, bound to her parents and to her maternal grandparents in her “spiritual home” in Knoxville.

As a girl, she read everything from history books to Ayn Rand and was accepted to Fisk University, the historically Black school in Nashville, after her junior year of high school. College was a time for achievement, and for trouble. Her grades were strong, she edited the Fisk literary magazine and helped start the campus branch of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. But she rebelled against school curfews and other rules and was kicked out for a time because her “attitudes did not fit those of a Fisk woman,” she later wrote. After the school changed the dean of women, Giovanni returned and graduated with honors in history in 1967.

Giovanni relied on support from friends to publish her debut collection, “Black Poetry Black Talk,” which came out in 1968, and in the same year she self-published “Black Judgement.” The radical Black Arts Movement was at its height and early Giovanni poems such as “A Short Essay of Affirmation Explaining Why,” “Of Liberation” and “A Litany for Peppe” were militant calls to overthrow white power. (“The worst junkie or black businessman is more humane/than the best honkie”).

“I have been considered a writer who writes from rage and it confuses me. What else do writers write from?” she wrote in a biographical sketch for Contemporary Writers. “A poem has to say something. It has to make some sort of sense; be lyrical; to the point; and still able to be read by whatever reader is kind enough to pick up the book.”

Her opposition to the political system moderated over time, although she never stopped advocating for change and self-empowerment, or remembering martyrs of the past. In 2020, she was featured in an ad for presidential candidate Joe Biden, in which she urged young people to “vote because someone died for you to have the right to vote.”

Her best known work came early in her career; the 1968 poem “Nikki-Rosa.” It was a declaration of her right to define herself, a warning to others (including obituary writers) against telling her story and a brief meditation on her poverty as a girl and the blessings, from holiday gatherings to bathing in “one of those big tubs that folk in chicago barbecue in,” which transcended it.

“and I really hope no white person ever has cause

to write about me

because they never understand

Black love is Black wealth and they’ll

probably talk about my hard childhood

and never understand that

all the while I was quite happy”

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San Diego, CA

Padres roster review: Miguel Andujar

Published

10 hours ago

March 11, 2026

Press Room

Padres roster review: Miguel Andujar – San Diego Union-Tribune

MIGUEL ANDUJAR

Position(s): Third base, left field, first base
Bats / Throws: Right / Right
2026 opening day age: 31
Height / Weight: 6-foot / 211 pounds
How acquired: Signed as a free agent in February 2026
Contract status: Will make $1.5 million in 2026, with the opportunity to earn another $2 million-plus in performance bonuses; his $4 million guarantee includes a $2.5 million buyout against an $8 million mutual option for 2027.
fWAR in 2025: 1.1
Key 2025 stats: .318 AVG, .352 OBP, .470 SLG, 10 HRs, 44 RBIs, 36 runs, 17 walks, 49 strikeouts, 1 steal (94 games, 341 plate appearances)

STAT TO NOTE

.986 — Andujar’s OPS against left-handed pitching in 2025, the second-highest mark of his career and well above his career .807 OPS against southpaws. Andujar had been below .600 in 2021 and 2022 before jumping to .871 in 2023 and a career-high .995 in 2024.

Up — Signed for $700,000 out of the Dominican Republic as a 16-year-old in the international amateur market, Andujar needed two years to get out of the Yankees’ rookie-ball affiliate in the Gulf Coast League and finally cracked top-100 lists ahead of the 2018 season — No. 59 at Baseball America and No. 65 at MLB.com — after reaching Triple-A following a 16-homer season (.850 OPS). Andujar even made his MLB debut as a 22-year-old in 2017 and looked like he’d be a big part of the Yankees’ future after pairing 27 homers and 92 RBIs with an .855 OPS in finishing second to Shohei Ohtani in AL Rookie of the Year voting in 2018. But a right shoulder labrum tear derailed Andujar in 2019 and Andujar was never able to grab a starting job again in New York. The Pirates claimed him late in 2022 and then the Athletics claimed him after the 2023 season. By then, he’d developed into a platoon player with defensive limitations. Andujar had a .697 OPS in 75 games in his first year with the Athletics and a .765 OPS in 60 games last year when, after missing time with a right oblique strain, he was shipped to the Reds for a minor league pitcher. Andujar went on to hit .359/.400/.544 with four homers and 17 RBIs in 34 games to help the Reds lock up a wild-card spot. He was 0-for-4 with a walk and a strikeout in the NL Wild Card Series sweep at the hands of the Dodgers.

Miguel Andujar #41 of the San Diego Padres participates in drills during spring training workouts at the Peoria Sports Complex on Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026 in Peoria, Ariz.(Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

2026 OUTLOOK

The need for right-handed balance in the lineup was painfully obvious in the Padres’ NL Wild Card Series loss to the Cubs, so Andujar became a target after 1B/OF Ryan O’Hearn walked as a free agent. Expect Andujar to get at-bats against lefties as either a DH, first base, third base or left field — the spots he’s been playing in spring training.

ROSTER RANKINGS

1. OF Fernando Tatis Jr.
2. 3B Manny Machado
3. OF Jackson Merrill
4. RHP Nick Pivetta
5. RHP Michael King
6. RHP Mason Miller
7. OF Ramón Laureano
8. SS Xander Bogaerts
9. LHP Adrián Morejón
10. RHP Jeremiah Estrada
11. RHP Jason Adam
12. 2B Jake Cronenworth
13. RHP Joe Musgrove
14. RHP Randy Vásquez
15. INF Miguel Andujar
16. OF Gavin Sheets
17. LHP JP Sears
18. RHP Yu Darvish
19. RHP Bradgley Rodriguez
20. RHP David Morgan
21. C Freddy Fermin
22. LHP Wandy Peralta
23. C Luis Campusano
24. LHP Yuki Matsui
25. INF Sung-Mun Song
26. RHP German Marquez
27. RHP Matt Waldron
28. OF Bryce Johnson
29. OF/1B Nick Castellanos
30. RHP Ron Marinaccio
31. RHP Bryan Hoeing
32. LHP Kyle Hart
33. INF Will Wagner
34. RHP Garrett Hawkins
35. RHP Miguel Mendez
36. RHP Daison Acosta
37. RHP Ty Adcock
38. RHP Alek Jacob
39. INF Mason McCoy

Removed from 40-man roster

OF Tirso Ornelas (designated for assignment)
RHP Jhony Brito (60-day injured list)

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San Diego, CA

San Diego Bishop Is Out of a Job

Published

22 hours ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Pope Leo XIV has accepted the resignation of the Chaldean Catholic bishop of San Diego, California, a decision announced Tuesday by the Vatican after the bishop was arrested on embezzlement charges. The San Diego County Sheriff’s Office said last week it had arrested Bishop Emmanuel Shaleta on Thursday at San Diego International Airport as he tried to leave the country, reports the AP. The office said it acted after someone from Shaleta’s church provided a statement and documentation “showing potential embezzlement from the church.” Shaleta was being held on $125,000 bail on eight counts of embezzlement, money laundering, and aggravated white collar crime, the statement said. Shaleta pleaded not guilty on Monday, reports NBC San Diego.

“He was on his way to Germany,” prosecutor Joel Madero said. “Given his access to funds, the fact that he had over $9,000 in the bag when he was stopped, and the fact that he has these international ties … I do believe that some bail to ensure he shows up is appropriate.” There was no immediate reply to an email sent to Shaleta’s parish, St. Peter Chaldean Church, seeking comment and contact information for his attorney. The Vatican said in its daily bulletin Tuesday that Leo had accepted Shaleta’s resignation under the code of canon law for eastern rite churches that allows for the pope to agree if a bishop asks to step down.

Leo actually accepted the resignation when Shaleta presented it in February, but an announcement was not made until Tuesday, according to the Vatican embassy in Washington. The Holy See appears to have waited to announce the decision to avoid interfering with the police investigation. Leo named Bishop Saad Hanna Sirop as a temporary administrator. Shaleta, 69, was ordained a priest of the Chaldean Catholic Church in Detroit in 1984. He was named to the San Diego branch of the eastern rite Catholic Church in the US in 2017.

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San Diego, CA

Padres roster review: Germán Márquez

Published

1 day ago

March 10, 2026

Press Room

Padres roster review: Germán Márquez – San Diego Union-Tribune

GERMÁN MÁRQUEZ

Position(s): Right-handed pitcher
Bats / Throws: Right / Right
2026 opening day age: 31
Height / Weight: 6-foot-1 / 230 pounds
How acquired: Signed as a free agent in February 2026
Contract status: Will make $1 million in 2026 with a $750,000 buyout on a mutual option for 2027; can add up to $3.25 million in performance bonuses.
fWAR in 2025: 0.3
Key 2025 stats: 3-16, 6.70 ERA, 83 strikeouts, 48 walks, 1.71 WHIP, .317 opponent average, 126⅓ innings (26 starts)

STAT TO NOTE

36.9 — The percentage of groundballs that Márquez yielded in 2025, a career low and significantly below his career average (48%). Márquez’s groundball rate was regularly above 50% before requiring Tommy John surgery in early 2023. He made one start in 2024 and struggled mightily while making 26 starts last year.

Down — Márquez had a 4.40 ERA through his first seven years in the majors, not bad considering he pitched roughly half his games at one of the best hitting environments in the majors. In fact, Márquez has a 5.17 ERA in his career at Coors Field and a 4.22 ERA in road environments. But Márquez underwent Tommy John surgery early in 2023, made one start in the majors in mid-July in 2024 (4 IP, 3 ER) and struggled throughout his first full year back in the Rockies rotation. The season was so difficult for Márquez that he was actually worse on the road (7.32 ERA) than he was in 11 starts at Coors Field (5.98 ERA). His strikeout rate (5.9 per nine innings) and strikeout-to-walk ratio (1.73) were the worst of his careers, as was his walk rate (3.4 per nine innings), while his hit rate (12.0 per nine innings) was the second worst of his career. On top of that, Márquez’s groundball rate was also the lowest of his career (see stat to note) and ranked in the bottom 22nd percentile of the league and his hard-hit rate (48.5%) and average exit velocity (91.7 mph) both ranked in the bottom 2 percentile of the league. One reason: a 94.8 mph four-seamer is down a few ticks than the height of his effectiveness. Márquez reached free agency after the season and signed with the Padres in February.

2026 OUTLOOK

Márquez has a big-league deal with the Padres, but he’ll have to rediscover his pre-elbow-reconstruction form to hold onto a roster spot, as RHP Griffin Canning (Achilles) is expected to push for a spot at some point this season and the likes of LHP JP Sears, RHP Matt Waldron and minor league signees like Marco Gonzales could warrant looks if Márquez’s struggles continue into 2026.

German Marquez #33 of the San Diego Padres participates in drills during spring training workouts at the Peoria Sports Complex on Monday, Feb. 16, 2026 in Peoria, Ariz.(Meg McLaughlin / The San Diego Union-Tribune)