I’m a prose woman. Some poets move me – Verandah Porche, Charles Coe, Suheir Hammad – but usually I know them well enough to understand what they are writing. I didn’t have to know June Jordan (1936-2002) personally, though, to be knocked over by her integrity and the power of her work. It is the anniversary of June Jordan’s birth in 1936, as I was reminded by Campbell Ex, a valuable Facebook friend.
Unflinching in her approach to sexuality, race and justice, Jordan will always be remembered with honor by those involved in the struggle for Palestinian rights for her poem “Moving Towards Home.” It was written in the wake of the 1982 attack on Palestinians in Lebanon and it just happens that I am working on a novel about that same period. Here’s the last stanza: 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.
Her parents came from the Caribbean. She tells us in one article, "I am the daughter of peasants who begged and borrowed their way to these United States. They wanted an escape from no-shoes-no-drinkable-water poverty." She also wrote novels, plays and journalism. Wikipedia says that she “is still widely regarded as one of the most significant and prolific Black, bisexual writers of the twentieth century.”
I have seen her perform live and it was an amazing, energizing evening. She had a way of putting things – here are a few knockout comments:
“Lately... Americans have begun to understand that trouble does not start somewhere on the other side of town. It seems to originate inside the absolute middle of the homemade cherry pie. In our history, the state has failed to respond to the weak. You could be white, male, Presbyterian and heterosexual besides, but if you get fired or if you get sick tomorrow, you might as well be Black, for all the state will want to hear from you.”
“Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn’t that what freedom implies?
“If any of us hopes to survive, s/he must meet the extremity of the American female condition with immediate and political response. The thoroughly destructive and indefensible subjugation of the majority of Americans cannot continue except at the peril of the entire body politic.”
And one of my favorites….
“The purpose of polite behavior is never virtuous. Deceit, surrender, and concealment: these are not virtues. The goal of the mannerly is comfort, per se.”
No, I did not know about Jane Jordan, but now I will go read some of her work. That makes two authors you have introduced me to - the other being Grace Paley.
Once again you have enriched my life! Go Katz!
Posted by: Gema Gray | 10 July 2009 at 20:24