POET

June Jordan (1936 - 2002)

BIOGRAPHY

African-American poet, novelist, and playwright June Jordan wrote for all ages, but her concern for children, especially African-American children, always stood out in her work. In terms of writing for young adults, she is well known for His Own Where, a novel offering hope for those who live in poverty; but Jordan has also created distinguished poetic work for children, including Who Look at Me. In addition to aiming some of her own writings at young readers, Jordan has made efforts to help children write, leading workshops for African-American and Hispanic youngsters and editing a collection of some of their work with Terri Bush in The Voice of the Children.

Jordan was born July 9, 1936, in Harlem, New York. She had a difficult childhood and was often beaten by her father. She recalled in Civil Wars: Selected Essays, 1963-80 that "for a long while during childhood I was relatively small, short, and, in some other ways, a target for bully abuse. In fact, my father was the first regular bully in my life and there were many days when my uncle pounded down the two flights of stairs in our house to grab the chair, or the knife, or whatever, from my father's hands." But Jordan also has positive memories of her childhood; for example, she recorded this memory of what influenced her to become a writer: "My mother carried me to the Universal Truth Center [a church] on 125th Street, every Sunday, before we moved from Manhattan. I must have been two years old, or three, when the distinctive belief of that congregation began to make sense to me: that 'by declaring the truth, you create the truth.' In other words, if you lost your wallet you declared, 'There is no loss in Divine Mind'—and kept looking. Those words, per se, possessed the power to change the facts; the wallet would turn up again." She summarized: "Early on, the scriptural concept that 'in the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God'—the idea that the word could represent and then deliver into reality what the word symbolized—this possibility of language, of writing, seemed to me magical and basic and irresistible."

Jordan began writing as a child. She told Alexis De Veaux in an interview for Essence: "I was good at writing quick rhymes and things and the kids around me accepted it. It was not anything my peers considered weird. I would write things for them that they wanted to give to somebody, whether it was a love note or a putdown." Though her family had exposed her to poetry at an early age, she was not encouraged in her ambition of becoming a poet. As she remarked to De Veaux: "My father wanted me to grow up to be a doctor; my mother wanted me to marry one. Being a poet did not compute for them."

For most of her high school years, Jordan's parents sent her to a prep school where she was the only black student. Her teachers encouraged her interest in poetry, but did not introduce her to the work of any black poets. After high school Jordan enrolled in Barnard College in New York City. Though she enjoyed some of her classes and admired many of the people she met, she described her years there in Civil Wars this way: "No one ever presented me with a single Black author, poet, historian, personage, or idea, for that matter. Nor was I ever assigned a single woman to study as a thinker, or writer, or poet, or life force. Nothing that I learned, here, lessened my feeling of pain and confusion and bitterness as related to my origins: my street, my family, my friends. Nothing showed me how I might try to alter the political and economic realities underlying our Black condition in white America." Because of this feeling of dissatisfaction, Jordan left Barnard without graduating.

In 1955, when Jordan married, interracial marriages faced great opposition. Looking back on her younger self and that of her now ex-husband, Jordan wrote about the experience of her interracial marriage in her On Call: Political Essays, 1981-1985: "Thinking only about what to wear, exactly, or what reading to pack on the honeymoon trip they couldn't afford and about brand new sleeping bags, those two kids quietly did something against the law, against every tradition, against the power arrangements of this country: they loved each other." Characterizing the opposition they and couples like them met, Jordan recalled: "When two people do something the rest of us don't like or some of us feel real nosy about, then the rest of us interpose ourselves in any way we can. We call out the law. We produce experts. We maintain an attitude. We ostracize. We whisper. We develop jargon such as Interracial Marriage or Sleeping White or Niggah Lover or Identity Conflict or Acting Out or Patterns of Rebellion. And if possible, we kill them, the ones who love each other despite sacrosanct rules of enmity and hatred."

Despite their love, Jordan and her husband divorced after ten and a half years, and she was left to support their son. At about the same time, Jordan's career began to take off. During the early 1960s she worked as a production assistant for the documentary film The Cool World. Becoming interested in the way environmental changes could improve the lives of low income Black families, she began working with R. Buckminster Fuller on possible beneficial architectural designs. She began teaching at the City College of the City University of New York in 1966, and in 1969 she published her first book of poetry, Who Look at Me. Aimed at young readers, the book was originally a project of famed black poet Langston Hughes, who died before completing much substantial work on it. Jordan was urged to go on with it, and she did. Who Look at Me uses Black English poetry to describe several paintings of black Americans, prints of which are included in the book. Jordan feels strongly about the use of Black English in this and many other of her books, seeing it as a way to keep black community and culture alive, among many other positive things. Thus at about the same period in her life, she encouraged black youngsters to write in that idiom in conducting her writing workshops for black and Puerto Rican children. With Terri Bush, she edited a collection of her young pupils' writings, The Voice of the Children; she also edited Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry.

Jordan's 1971 novel for young adults, His Own Where, is also written in Black English. But here she expresses her interests in environmental design in this book about a sixteen-year-old black boy, Buddy, and his younger girlfriend, Angela, who try to create a world of their own in an abandoned house near a cemetery. Jordan explained her feelings about the book to De Veaux: "Buddy acts, he moves. He is the man I believe in, the man who will come to lead his people into a new community." Jordan continued: "All of the concepts suggested in His Own Where were governed by the principle that they should really be possible." Some of Jordan's other work for young people has not been as hopeful. In Dry Victories, two boys discuss the achievements of Reconstruction and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s, but conclude that not much has been gained. The author has also written picture books for children. New Life: New Room concerns the adjustments of a black family to a new baby, and Kimako's Story was inspired by the young daughter of Jordan's friend, fellow writer Alice Walker.

Although Jordan has not written specifically for young readers since Kimako's Story was published in 1981, she explores her own formative years in Soldier: A Poet's Childhood. Jordan describes here the first twelve years of her life, when she learned to be a "good little soldier," under the severe tutelage of her father who drove her to be strong and smart, to appreciate beauty, but often at the cost of a beating. Jordan explained her goal for the book in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth available on the Web site Online NewsHour: "I wanted to honor my father, first of all, and secondly, I wanted people to pay attention to a little girl who is gifted intellectually and creative, and to see that there's a complexity here that we may otherwise not be prepared to acknowledge or even search for, let alone encourage, and to understand that this is an okay story . . . a story, I think, with a happy outcome." Jordan further commented in an Essence interview: "My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant." Critics responded favorably to the emotional intensity of Jordan's story and her ability to tell it from the consciousness of a child, without judgment or analysis of the experience. Written "in the flowing language of a prose poem," observed Booklist critic Stephanie Zvirin, Soldier is "a haunting coming-of-age memoir."

In an interview on Alternative Radio, Jordan was asked what she sees as the role of the poet in society. Jordan replied: "The role of the poet, beginning with my own childhood experience, is to deserve the trust of people who know that what you do is work with words." She continued: "Always to be as honest as possible and to be as careful about the trust invested in you as you possibly can. Then the task of a poet of color, a black poet, as a people hated and despised, is to rally the spirit of your folks." The author also noted: "I have to get myself together and figure out an angle, a perspective, that is an offering, that other folks can use to pick themselves up, to rally and to continue or, even better, to jump higher, to reach more extensively in solidarity with even more varieties of people to accomplish something. I feel that it's a spirit task."

In Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan, which was published the same year of the author's death from breast cancer, Jordan presents thirty-two essays that appeared in previous collections, as well as eight new essays. The essays examine a wide range of topics, from sexism, racism, and Black English to trips the author made to various places, the decline of the U.S. educational system, and the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001. Writing for Lambda Book Report, Samiya A. Bashir called the new essays "fiery" and commented that the author was "called 'our premiere Black woman essayist' by longtime friend and former editor, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison." Bashir added that the collection provides "evidence of . . . [the author's] indomitable spirit." Noting that the author writes about homosexuality as well as her own bisexuality, Bashir went on to write, "In the essay, 'A Couple of Words on Behalf of Sex (Itself),' Jordan moved beyond the ethereal beauty of love in defense of the concrete beauty of sexual experience and desire. In typically humorous style she decried the increasing demonization of sexuality and sexual desire." A Kirkus Reviews contributor wrote, "Some of the stronger pieces here . . . address the vast complex of injustice that is contemporary American life."

Published posthumously in 2005, Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan includes various poems published from 1969 through 2001, including many of her final poems that discuss her battle with cancer. Janet St. John, writing in Booklist, declared the book "a must-read for those wanting to learn and be transformed by Jordan's opinions and impressions." A Publishers Weekly contributor remarked on the author's "verbal power and . . . commitment to justice."

In an obituary in the San Francisco Chronicle, Annie Nakao wrote that the author "left a mountain of literary and political works." Nakao added: "As I discovered soon enough when I picked up a June Jordan work, its contents could shout, caress, enrage. The thing it never did was leave you unengaged." In an article of appreciation in the Los Angeles Times following the author's death, Lynell George explained how the author "spent her life stitching together the personal and political so the seams didn't show." George further stated that throughout her life the author "continued to publish across the map, swinging form to form as the occasion or topic demanded. Through poetry, essays, plays, journalism, even children's literature, she engaged such topics as race, class, sexuality, capitalism, single motherhood and liberation struggles around the globe."

CAREER

Poet, essayist, novelist, editor, and author of children's books. Assistant to Frederick Wiseman, producer of motion picture The Cool World, New York, NY, 1964; Mobilization for Youth, Inc., New York, NY, associate research writer in technical housing department, 1965-66; City College of the City University of New York, English and literature faculty, 1966-68, assistant professor of English, 1975-76, then writer-in-residence; Connecticut College, New London, CT, English faculty and director of Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK Program), 1967-69; Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, literature faculty, 1969-74; State University of New York at Stony Brook, NY, associate professor, 1978-82, professor of English, 1982-89, director of Poetry Center and creative writing program, 1986-89; University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA, professor of Afro-American studies and women's studies, 1989-93, professor of Afro-American studies, 1994-2002, founder and director of Poetry for the People program, 1991-2002. Visiting poet-in- residence, MacAlester College, 1980; writer-in-residence, City College of the City University of New York; visiting poet, State University of New York at Stonybrook; playwright-in-residence, 1987-88, poet-in-residence, 1988, New Dramatists, New York, NY; poet-in-residence, Walt Whitman Birthplace Association, 1988; poet-in-residence, Swarthmore College, 2001; writer-in- residence, University of Pennsylvania, 2001; artist-in-residence, New York University, 2002. Visiting lecturer in English and Afro-American studies, Yale University, New Haven, CT, 1974-75; Reed Lecturer, Barnard College, New York, NY, 1976; chancellor's distinguished lecturer, University of California, Berkeley, 1986; visiting professor in department of Afro-American studies, University of Wisconsin, Madison, summer, 1988. Has given poetry readings in schools and colleges around the country and at the Guggenheim Museum. Founder and codirector, Voice of the Children, Inc. (creative writing workshop for children); cofounder, Afro-Americans against the Famine, beginning 1973. Member of board of directors, Teachers and Writers Collaborative, Inc., beginning 1978, and Center for Constitutional Rights, beginning 1984; member of board of governors, New York Foundation for the Arts, beginning 1986.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

FOR CHILDREN AND YOUNG ADULTS

• Who Look at Me (poetry; for young adults), Crowell (New York, NY), 1969.
• (Editor, with Terri Bush) The Voice of the Children (poetry anthology; for young adults), Holt (New York, NY), 1970.
• His Own Where (young adult novel), Crowell (New York, NY), 1971.
• Dry Victories (nonfiction; for young adults), Holt (New York, NY), 1972.
• Fannie Lou Hamer (biography; for young adults), illustrated by Albert Williams, Crowell (New York, NY), 1972.
• New Life: New Room (picture book), illustrated by Ray Cruz, Crowell (New York, NY), 1975.
• Kimako's Story (picture book), illustrated by Kay Burford, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 1981.

POETRY; FOR ADULTS

• (Editor) Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry (anthology), Doubleday (Garden City, NY), 1970.
• Some Changes, Dutton (New York, NY), 1971.
• Poem: On Moral Leadership as a Political Dilemma (Watergate, 1973), Broadside Press (Detroit, MI), 1973.
• New Days: Poems of Exile and Return, Emerson Hall (New York, NY), 1973.
• Okay Now, Simon & Schuster (New York, NY), 1977.
• Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry, Random House (New York, NY), 1977, revised edition, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1981.
• Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1980.
• Living Room: New Poems, 1980-1984, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 1985.
• High Tide—Marea Alta, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 1987.
• Lyrical Campaigns: Selected Poems, Virago Press (London, England), 1989.
• Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems, Thunder's Mouth Press (New York, NY), 1989.
• Haruko/Love Poetry: New and Selected Love Poems, Virago Press (London, England), 1993, published as Haruko: Love Poems, High Risk Books (New York, NY), 1994.
• Kissing God Good-Bye: New Poems, 1991-1997, Doubleday (New York, NY), 1997.
• (Editor) Soulscript: A Collection of African American Poetry, Harlem Moon (New York, NY), 2004.
• Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan, edited by Jan Heller Levi and Sara Miles, Copper Canyon Press (Port Townsend, WA), 2005.

PLAYS

• In the Spirit of Sojourner Truth, produced at Public Theatre, New York, NY, May, 1979.
• For the Arrow that Flies by Day (staged reading), produced at the Shakespeare Festival, New York, NY, April, 1981.
• Freedom Now Suite, music by Adrienne B. Torf, produced in New York, NY, 1984.
• The Break, music by Adrienne B. Torf, produced in New York, NY, 1984.
• The Music of Poetry and the Poetry of Music, music by Adrienne B. Torf, produced in New York, NY, and Washington, DC, 1984.
• Bang Bang über Alles, music by Adrienne B. Torf, produced in Atlanta, GA, 1986.
• I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky (opera libretto; music by John Adams; produced at Lincoln Center, New York, NY), Scribner (New York, NY), 1995.

NONFICTION

• Civil Wars: Selected Essays, 1963-80 (autobiographical essays), Beacon Press (Boston, MA), 1981, revised edition, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996.
• On Call: Political Essays, 1981-1985, South End Press (Boston, MA), 1985.
• Bobo Goetz a Gun, Curbstone Press (Willimantic, CT), 1985.
• Moving towards Home: Political Essays, Virago Press (London, England), 1989.
• Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 1992.
• Affirmative Acts: Political Essays, Anchor Books (New York, NY), 1998.
• Soldier: A Poet's Childhood (memoir), Basic Books (New York, NY), 2000.
• Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan, Basic/Civitas Books (New York, NY), 2002.

OTHER

• Also author of The Issue. Work represented in numerous anthologies, including Double Stitch: Black Women Write about Mothers and Daughters, edited by Patricia Bell-Scott, Harper, 1992. Contributor of stories and poems (prior to 1969 under name June Meyer) to national periodicals, including Esquire, Nation, Evergreen, Partisan Review, Negro Digest, Harper's Bazaar, Library Journal, Encore, Freedomways, New Republic, Ms., American Dialog, New Black Poetry, Black World, Black Creation, Essence, and to newspapers, including Village Voice, New York Times, and New York Times Magazine. Author of column "The Black Poet Speaks of Poetry," American Poetry Review, 1974-77; regular columnist for the Progressive, 1989-97; contributing editor for Chrysalis, First World and Hoo Doo.

FURTHER READINGS

BOOKS

• American Women Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2000.
• Children's Literature Review, Volume 10, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1986.
• Contemporary Literary Criticism, Volume 114, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1999.
• Contemporary Poets, 7th edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 2001.
• Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 38: Afro-American Writers after 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1985.
• Jordan, June, Civil Wars: Selected Essays, 1963-80, revised edition, Scribner (New York, NY), 1996.
• Jordan, June, Soldier: A Poet's Childhood, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2000.
• Muller, Lauren, editor, June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, Routledge (New York, NY), 1995.
• St. James Guide to Young Adult Writers, 2nd edition, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1999.

PERIODICALS

• Atlanta Journal-Constitution, May 7, 2000, Valerie Boyd, review of Soldier, p. L15.
• Austin Chronicle, August 25, 2000, Craig Arnold, review of Soldier.
• Black Issues Book Review, September, 2000, Samiya A. Bashir, review of Soldier, p. 32.
• Booklist, February 15, 2001, Donna Seaman, review of Kissing God Goodbye: Poems 1991-96, p. 1102; April 1, 2001, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Soldier, p. 1461; September 1, 2005, Janet St. John, review of Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan, p. 43.
• ColorLines, winter, 1999, Julie Quiroz, "'Poetry Is a Political Act': An Interview with June Jordan."
• Essence, April, 1981, Alexis De Veaux, "Creating Soul Food: June Jordan"; September, 2000, Alexis De Veaux, "A Conversation with June Jordan," p. 102.
• Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2002, review of Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan, p. 933.
• Lambda Book Report, October, 2002, Samiya A. Bashir, review of Some of Us Did Not Die, p. 28.
• Library Journal, October 1, 2004, Michael Rogers, review of Soulscript: A Collection of African American Poetry, p. 121.
• Los Angeles Times, May 15, 2000, Merle Rubin, review of Soldier, p. E3; June 20, 2002, Lynell George, "An Appreciation: A Writer Intent on Rallying the Spirit of Survival; Poet June Jordan Cast a Penetrating Eye on Issues Both Political and Personal," p. E1.
• Ms., June-July, 2000, R. Erica Doyle, review of Soldier, p. 82.
• New York Times, July 4, 2000, Felicia R. Lee, "A Feminist Survivor with the Eyes of a Child," review of Soldier, p. B1.
• Publishers Weekly, May 8, 2000, review of Soldier, p. 218; July 8, 2002, review of Some of Us Did Not Die, p. 42; June 27, 2005, review of Directed by Desire, p. 54.

ONLINE

• Alternative Radio, http://www.alternativeradio.org/ (March 24, 2006), David Barsamian, "June Jordan: Childhood Memories, Poetry & Palestine."
• June Jordan Home Page, http://junejordan.com (March 24, 2006).
• Online NewsHour,http://www.pbs.org/newshour/ (March 26, 2006), Elizabeth Farnsworth, "A Conversation with June Jordan."

PERIODICALS

• Guardian (London, England), June 20, 2002, p. 20.
• Los Angeles Times, June 15, 2002, p. B19.
• New York Times, June 18, 2002, p. A23.
• San Francisco Chronicle, June 27, 2002, Annie Nakao, "June Jordan—in Your Face and in Our Hearts," p. D12.
• Washington Post, June 16, 2002, p. C8.