June Jordan_Her Life and Letters

by Valerie Kinloch

  GENOCIDE TO STOP

  I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED AFFIRMATIVE

  ACTION AND REACTION

  I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED MUSIC

  OUT THE WINDOWS

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  I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED

  NOBODY THIRST AND NOBODY

  NOBODY COLD53

  In this chant-like song, Jordan engages in an awakening and an uprising, or an

  “Intifada,” a word that has its roots in the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli military rule in 1987. Jordan’s uprising opposes inhumane conditions—

  ”genocide,” “thirst,” and “cold”—that threaten people’s livelihood. In place of such conditions, Jordan demands “action,” “reaction,” “music,” and “love.”

  She insists on the eradication of “boundaries” that maintain human inequality, suffering, and fear; this point reiterates her belief in a Beloved Community that is borderless and that has implications for international human rights coalitions. Jordan continues:

  I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED I WANTED

  JUSTICE UNDER MY NOSE

  I SAID I LOVED YOU AND I WANTED

  BOUNDARIES TO DISAPPEAR

  I WANTED

  NOBODY ROLL BACK THE TREES!

  I WANTED

  NOBODY TAKE AWAY DAYBREAK!

  I WANTED

  NOBODY FREEZE ALL THE PEOPLE ON THEIR

  KNEES!54

  This poem, along with some of Jordan’s other work, articulates a politics of rejection, one in which collective efforts against segregationist practices, genocide, and unfair political actions are oftentimes ignored. Jordan, however, delivered countless speeches on U.S. politics, democracy, and foreign affairs because of her disappointment with political structures. These speeches were delivered to audiences at the Library of Congress, the University of North Dakota, and at Town Hall meetings in New York City during the late 1970s and into the 1980s and 1990s. In “Waking Up in the Middle of Some American Dream,” Jordan discusses democracy and human relations by referring to how one chooses to live both independently and as a participating member within various communities. This essay, demonstrative of Jordan’s growth as a writer and an activist, highlights how she no longer conceptualized communities of struggle along shared racial lines; she believed such communities should be formed by a collective of visionary people who desire freedom, love, and safety for themselves and others:

  We must learn how to satisfy our individual needs in the context of a heterogeneous, equally entitled, millionfold population of our peers. I am waking up in

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  the middle of some American dreams that have tormented most of us throughout most of our American history!55

  Throughout her life, Jordan dreamed of liberation and freedom. She examined unjust living conditions and protested dangerous political decisions that involved nuclear wars, the bombing of Baghdad, and the lack of U.S. support to Nicaragua, so as not to remain “here inside the big and messy and com-bustible haystack of these United States, and the forecast is not good.”56

  Believing that people should support worldwide efforts to mobilize, Jordan participated in an event named after her poem “Moving Towards Home”

  organized by poet-activists Sara Miles and Kathy Engel. This 1982 event, benefiting UNICEF’s humanitarian efforts in Lebanon, brought together various Arab, American, and Israeli poets to talk about the harsh suffering of people in Lebanon and “the massacre of Palestinians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Lebanon.”57 For this occasion, Jordan read her poem “Moving Towards Home,” in which she declares:

  I was born a Black woman

  and now

  I am become a Palestinian

  against the relentless laughter of evil

  there is less and less living room

  and where are my loved ones?

  It is time to make our way home.58

  Jordan is but one black woman among many others—Toni Cade Bambara, Angela Davis, Fannie Lou Hamer, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sojourner Truth, Alice Walker, and Phillis Wheatley—who cherished and valued human lives. They insisted on the safe return “home” of displaced persons “without grief without wailing aloud.” The only way Jordan could return home—return to the promise of freedom, liberty, and love imagined by and often denied to disenfranchised people—was by publicly “talk[ing] about home.”59 Home, for the poet, signified a sense of belonging in and to a world of justice in which violence was not tolerated and where the imaginings of a “Beloved Community” held within it safety, comfort, and free will. Jordan searched for this place, this home, her entire life.

  An examination of Jordan’s activist work and political writing during this period speaks volumes to her evolving beliefs and values concerning democracy, civil and political rights, and people of color throughout the world. While she did not readily consider herself a spokeswoman for the disenfranchised, the tired, the weak, and even the strong visionaries in the world, a critical review of her life proves that she indeed was such a spokesperson. Momentous are Jordan’s public speaking performances and international campaigns for justice; her protests against nuclear power, Nicaragua’s Contra War, U.S.

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  international policies on the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and war in El Salvador; as well as her politically influenced travels across the globe. After this period and into the 1990s she also found the energy and strength to write such significant publications as Kissing God Goodbye: New Poems 1991–1997, I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then Saw the Sky, Haruko/Love Poems, Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems, Lyrical Campaigns: Selected Poems, and June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, coedited by Lauren Muller and the Poetry for the People Collective.

  In sum, the political writings and activist efforts of June Jordan, New York native, international activist, and eventual founder of Poetry for the People Collective at the University of California, Berkeley, serve as examples of the brilliance, rage, conflict, and optimism at the heart, not only of this particular black woman writer but also other political writers, artists, and activists of her time. Jordan always wrote for a clearly defined purpose, as highlighted in her statement, “I expect a distinctively Black poem to speak for me as-part-of-an-us.”60 Indeed, the poet utilized both the written and spoken word to advocate a return to the fundamental elements of human rights: civil liberties, fair treatment, education and literacy, and access to the political process. She also worked to eradicate other systems that challenge democratic order and perpetuate global injustice. Even today, Jordan’s writing continues to speak for, and give voice to, the experiences of the Third World, the poor, and women everywhere. Her work, from her writing, travels, teaching, speaking performances, and life, were, and continue to be, forms of political art contributing revolutionary-based efforts to peace, prosperity, fairness, and universal equality. She was a serious artist, a revolutionary thinker, and a brave activist whose dedication to human rights can be measured, in part, by her involvement in various civil rights movements, her numerous published writings, and her commitment to political work.

  Furthermore, Jordan’s writing and activist work demonstrate her constant awareness of identity politics. In other words, Jordan believed her personal and political engagement with the world was heavily influenced by the art that she and other black artists produced during the time, whether in the form of essays, poetry, or librettos. Jordan’s employment of figurative images and powerful words in her writing conveys messages of hope and liberation through what she often referred to as “democratic language”—language that is always political and revolutionary and that includes the realities of many voices
often excluded from the mainstream discourse on human and civil rights: “our language cannot refuse to reflect the agonizing process of alienation from our-selves. If we collaborate with the powerful then our language will lose its currency as a means to tell the truth in order to change the truth.”61 Jordan’s emphasis on the honesty of democratic language allowed her to self-identify as a revolutionary artist. Her writing, according to Adrienne Torf, is “about survival, about heart, and voice and where one finds power with others in the world. This can be found through honesty and truth.”62

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  In a 1981 interview with Karla Hammond, Jordan shared her understanding of a revolutionary artist. She stated, “Anyone who is a serious artist is a revolutionary whether that person is a painter or a musician, etc.” The poet continued with,

  That’s the nature of being an artist. That’s what creation is about whether we’re talking about Yeats or Neruda, Garcia Lorca, Mistral, Vallejo, or Adrienne Rich. . . . Creation is revolutionary. All the artists whom I care about most in poetry, and otherwise, are political revolutionaries at work.63

  According to Jordan, for one to identify as a revolutionary artist requires one to understand that one’s work, life, and activist efforts are always political statements. Jordan herself made political statements when she traveled to Lebanon, Nicaragua, the Bahamas, Mississippi, Oregon, Israel, Palestine, and Northern Ireland. She made political statements by participating in rallies and demonstrations, and by crafting writings on the revitalization of Harlem with Buckminister Fuller, on Mississippi’s proposals for land reform, and on the underrepresentation of black women in the Black Arts Movement. Clearly, she always identified herself as a revolutionary artist and activist who was unwilling to submit to inequality, violence, and benign neglect. June Jordan was devoted to protesting the systems and people that she disagreed with, both politically and personally.

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  F I V E

  The Voice of the Children

  While June Jordan was beginning a teaching career, producing scores of poetry and newspaper editorials, and participating in struggles for freedom, she was also writing important books for children and young adults. Her books Dry Victories, Fannie Lou Hamer, New Life: New Room, Kimako’s Story, and The Voice of the Children are important multigenre and poetic resources for examinations of contemporary issues that affect and even threaten the lives of young people. What are the implications of these works in terms of social realities, language differences, and identity markers? Specifically, what are the implications of these brave books in a world where children and young adults are taught codes of standards at the neglect and disregard of their own cultural and linguistic practices? And who was Jordan becoming politically, artistically, and intellectually as she crafted these books—as she embraced the sophistication of multiple languages, including Black English, and as she left the 1960s and 1970s and entered the 1980s and 1990s? How did Jordan move from writing books for youngsters to focusing on such topics as the political agenda of the Reagan administration?

  Jordan’s writing career should serve unmistakably as a source of ideas and ideals for public policy, education, and the teaching of social justice. Her decision to write for children was a logical one, given her concerns with education and safety, language preservation and the politics of Black English, and children’s rights. Against this backdrop, Jordan made a unique and valuable

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  contribution to children’s literature, especially to the burgeoning field of black children’s literature:

  When I was a child I never wanted to grow up because it was obvious that grownups were these really unhappy people. All the time they did things they didn’t want to do. They went to work. They woke up early. They pretended to like neighbors. They stayed married.1

  June Jordan’s contributions to children’s and young-adult literature are worthy of examination, for they challenge readers to acknowledge the experiences of youth as valid. Her representative writings respond to the social pressures, choices, and dilemmas of young people who use language to reveal ideas about the politics of identity and the freedom of expression. Such themes have since taken center stage in the works of contemporary black children’s and young-adult authors, such as Jacqueline Woodson and Angela Johnson.

  The following discussion on Jordan’s writing for young readers examines the aesthetics as well as the political implications and educational relevance of The Voice of the Children (1968), His Own Where (1971), Fannie Lou Hamer (1972), Dry Victories (1972), New Life: New Room (1975), and Kimako’s Story (1981), as they relate to the poet’s teaching and activist work.

  They are the people who have

  tried for hundreds of years

  to find their freedom.2

  In 1968, Jordan and Terri Bush completed their young-adult text The Voice of the Children. This book, a collection of poetry and prose written by young people between the ages of nine and seventeen, is composed of expressions of their opinions on politics, poverty, life, and the world. The contributors, often economically disadvantaged, are students attending various New York City public schools. Jordan’s work with these young people and her inclusion of their work in this volume (and also in Soulscript) demonstrates her ability to combine social activism and responsibility with teaching the tools of empowerment. The Voice of the Children brings awareness to a population whose voices and experiences are often ignored or silenced by those who hold power over them. In using the youths’ workshopped writing, many of which are written in Black English, Jordan makes the point that language, in any form and at any time, is a currency of power. Language, as a currency of power, expression, love, and identity should be cherished, valued, and used to communicate differences and resolve conflict—a belief Jordan shared with the youth she worked with in New York City.

  Although the writing style, sentence structure, and word choice may not be

  “grammatically correct” according to the rules of academic discourse, the text draws in readers with its powerful, versatile, and often pain-filled language. In the opening selection “Ghetto,” fourteen-year-old Vanessa Howard writes,

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  “Nine out of ten times when a person hears the word ‘ghetto’ they think of Black people first of all. They think just about every Black child comes from a Ghetto with lots of brothers and sisters.”3 Vanessa goes on to offer what she believes is other people’s understanding of the word—“Black, garbage, slum areas”—before powerfully concluding: “I think they put all Black people in a box marked ‘ghetto’ which leaves them having no identity. They should let Black people be seen for themselves, not as one reflection on all.”4

  This poem speaks to many personal and political issues. The young writer’s employment of an unidentified “they” suggests that she is talking about a subject who is not “Black” and who has the power to relegate black people to small, isolated living spaces—“a box.”5 Likewise, the poem speaks to urgent problems that Jordan, herself, was openly battling during this period: segregation, naming, and racial mythologies that denigrated people of color. The poem’s closing line, “They should let Black people be seen . . . not as one reflection on all,”6 supports Jordan’s struggle with identity, writing, activism, and love. However, just as Vanessa Howard writes in “Ghetto,” the inclination of

  “they”—the dominant culture—is to fit you—a specifically labeled and marked “other”—into a box. Jordan, Howard, and the other writers in The Voice of the Children embraced the realities of their varied lives and demonstrated a commitment to honest language.

&
nbsp; Readers can never really escape the words and ideas presented in this collection, for the young writers keep giving until the last line of the last poem.

  They give readers and supporters more hope, inspiration, and determination to fight for the human right to have their voices heard. These poems invite readers to enter into a world where differences are embraced, languages are cherished, and injustices are absent. The world imagined by Jordan and the young authors is in juxtaposition to the actual world in which these same youths lived during the 1960s and 1970s. On the one hand, there were groups campaigning for social, political, and civil rights. On the other, there were those who supported the maintenance of the status quo—a system of intolerable inequalities—which included the threat of nuclear war and underfunded public schools, especially in minority communities. Wherever the divisions lie, The Voice of the Children contributes to a public discussion on rights, politics, and the state of the world. Each piece presents feelings of bitterness and resentment at the marginalization of inner-city youth in society; highly developed analyses of the way in which the world is constructed are alive on every page.

  According to Jordan,

  The Voice of the Children has given poetry readings on WBAI, Channel 31, Channel 13, Channel 7, and at Hunter College, Queens College, and St. Marks in the Bowery. These poets and writers have been published in The Village Voice, McCall’s, UHURU, The New York Times, The Now Voices, HERE I AM, SOULSCRIPT, and the list is very long. 7

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  Jordan writes about the collection’s namesake, “Voice of the Children” 8—a group that she cofounded with Terri Bush and the director (1967–1970)—in her closing line: “Who really matter are these young people: these new lives: original, furious, gentle, broken, lyrical, strong, and summoning.”9