June Jordan (1936–2002)

This incredible, incredible book. Decades worth of activism, humanitarianism, criticism all written with such stirring force. June Jordan's encompassing love for truth and justice was a necessary encounter.

"Freedom is indivisible or it is nothing at all besides sloganeering and temporary, short-sighted, and short-lived advancement for a few."

Over the past two weeks, I've read this book, taking my time with it. Devouring, understanding, letting the words sit and turning them over and I was show more simply amazed by the scope her work covers. Whether urging bravery in the face of brutality or writing against the erasure of Black women activists and writers and poets or when condemning racism, islamophobia, sexism, child abuse and neglect, homophobia or biphobia, her words still as essential now as they were then. show less

2023 Edit

After this second readthrough, I'd still highly recommend this collection for provoking the kind of thought that I truly believe can lead to liberation. Reading these essays in 2023 made Jordan's words feel even more necessary than they did to me in 2016 and I've newly committed to reading her previous collections over the next several years, so I have access to the essays not included here. All that being said, one of the areas of weakness I noticed more this readthrough than the show more first one is the lack of a robust conceptualization of ableism, which impacts some of her language choices and mindsets throughout. With that caveat added, everything from my previous review stands.

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2016 Original Review

As the painful reality of the injustice and ignorance rampant in the world fought to drown my spirit over the past couple of weeks, this collection of essays kept me afloat. Jordan's mix of intellectualism, vivid storytelling, and down-to-earth realness created a mental and emotional place of recharge and growth that allowed me not only to expand my way of considering the world but also to find solace and hope during a time of sorrow and uncertainty. Her dedication to explicating both personal and political truth and all the ways the personal and political connect regardless of how unfavorably others would receive those truths were especially encouraging for me as someone who shares several identity categories with Jordan (Black, bisexual, female, writer). This collection was an absolute gift to my life, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Even if you don't agree with some of the ideas and perspectives Jordan put forth, her essays will make you think more deeply about what you do believe. show less

His Own Where by the late poet June Jordan is a short YA book that reads more like a prose poem. It was originally published in 1971 but was recently reissued by The Feminist Press. It is notable for being written entirely in what we now call Black English.

Buddy Rivers, age 16, and Angela Figueroa, age 14, meet in the hospital where Angela’s mother works and where Buddy is watching over his father, who was struck by a car. When Angela’s mother complains to her husband that Angela went show more off with a boy (Buddy was merely walking her home), Angela’s father beats her so badly she needs hospital care. Social services sends her to a home for girls, and her vicious, cruel parents are happy to see her go.

Buddy, loyal and caring, is determined to help free Angela from the confines of her rotten life. When he visits her at the Home for Girls, Buddy sees her distress:

"Angela sound funny. Hoarse. Buddy feel scare that she will cry.

‘Angela! I break you outa here!’

‘What you mean? What you saying?’

‘Listen baby, I mean liberation. Here and now! All you gotta do is follow me!’

Tears come from Angela.”

They are still just kids and Buddy is a dreamer, but he also has learned from his father the ways of trying to make his dreams come true. He and Angela run away, and try to make it on their own.

Discussion: This is a most unusual book in terms of its narrative technique, and yet it also is reminiscent of the stream-of-consciousness narratives employed at the beginning of the modernist period. The rhythm and music of the streets of New York infuses the prose. When Buddy and Angela walk home, they see:

"Streets turning off except for candystores, and liquor stores and iron grates dull interlocking over glass. Except for the bars the people party high knees and feet poke rapid sharp toward an indoor kitchen, bedroom. People hurry calmly from the nighttime start to glittering like oil.”

Their one place they can safely be together is in the cemetery:

"Cemetery let them lie there belly close, their shoulders now undressed down to the color of the heat they feel, in lying close, their legs a strong disturbing of the dust. His own where, own place for loving made for making love, the cemetery where nobody guard the dead.”

This book was a finalist for the National Book Award. June Jordan was a Professor of English at SUNY, Professor of African American Studies at Berkeley, a poet, feminist, pacifist, and social activist, who died much too young of breast cancer in 2002.

Evaluation: This is a touching love story and an urban poem all in one. It is impossible to read without hearing the wail of a tenor sax flow around and through the story like a bluesy jazz ballad. You can hear it wafting over the sights and sounds of the city to envelop these two homeless, drifting kids into the home and hope of each other. show less

I just finished reading this about 15 minutes ago and am once more in awe of June Jordan. This is a masterful, poetic, piece of prose. The language is so beautiful and powerful, the characters so richly drawn and real. Buddy is a brilliant observer of both the beauty and injustices in our world. His youthful perspective and energy compel him to reconfigure the world in small and big ways. He is a true hero and leader, transforming the lives of everyone around him by never accepting that show more things can't be different then they are and then proving that point by changing everything in his way. show less