June Jordan
April 23–24, 2001
- Reading: Streaming video, audio MP3
- Individual poems on PennSound
- Discussion: Streaming video, audio MP3
- Photos from Jordan's visit
- See the Kelly Writers House calendar entry for more about this event
- 2001 Fellows seminar notes
- 2001 Fellows print brochure
Bio
June Jordan is Professor of African American Studies at the University of
California, Berkeley, where she also directs the POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE
program, which she founded. She has published many volumes of poetry and
political essays, including CIVIL WARS, TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES, NAMING OUR
KISSING GOD GOOD-BYE. In her book of political essays, AFFIRMATIVE ACTS,
she writes with lyric power, often in anger or disconsolateness (or both),
of the dismantling of affirmative action, on real as opposed to imagined
cultural pluralism, on bisexuality - ruminating on the combustible
intersections of race, class, sexual choice, and injustice, reflecting on
the palpable hatred that infuses American society, speaking out against
worldwide suffering. Her essay and poems present the "intimate face of
universal struggle," in her phrase. Her recently published memoir,
SOLDIER, lovingly and angrily depicts her brutal father, a West Indian
elevator operator who wanted his only child to be extraordinarily
successful--to attain the dignity and power allowed only to white men at
the time. To advance this ambition, he repeatedly challenged the young
June physically, psychologically, and intellectually. The memoir ends as
June is 12, offered admission, and a full scholarship, to the prestigious
(all-white) Northfield Academy. "I knew if I said, 'No, thank you,' my
father would kill me... And I wondered if I was about to become a first."
In SOLDIER we encounter the making of the lyricism and the musicality, as
well as the strength and outrage, that characterizes the poet whose widely
discussed, widely anthologized poems we have come to know.
Photos from Jordan's visit
