June Jordan
June Jordan
June Millicent Jordanwas a Caribbean-American bisexual poet and activist...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPoet
Date of Birth9 July 1936
CountryUnited States of America
children motherhood names
In the name of motherhood and fatherhood and education and good manners, we threaten and suffocate and bind and ensnare and bribe and trick children into wholesale emulation of our ways.
names voice diversity
If we lived in a democratic state our language would have to hurtle, fly, curse, and sing, in all the common American names, all the undeniable and representative and participating voices of everybody here.
names
I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name
love hate names
As a poet and writer, I deeply love and I deeply hate words. I love the infinite evidence and change and requirements and possibilities of language; every human use of words that is joyful, or honest or new, because experience is new... But as a Black poet and writer, I hate words that cancel my name and my history and the freedom of my future: I hate the words that condemn and refuse the language of my people in America.
apparently behalf cannot car couch courts freeze kid nor property seize
The courts cannot garnish a father's salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat.
CORE was committed to nonviolence, but I was not.
legacy energy moral
The neglected legacy of the Sixties is just this: unabashed moral certitude, and the purity -- the incredibly outgoing energy -- of righteous rage.
expectations atmosphere revolution
Revolution always unfolds inside an atmosphere of rising expectations.
friendship mother young
But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966.
heart sexuality tyranny
What tyranny could exceed a tyranny that dictates to the human heart?
powerful mean poetry
What's important about poetry in the context of leadership is that most of the time, power has to do with dominance. But poetry is never about dominance. Poetry is powerful but it cannot even aspire to dominate anyone. It means making a connection. That's what it means.
law justice united-states
The United States Supreme Court, once a reliable if ultimate recourse for progressive and even revolutionary grievances, has become a retrograde wellspring for enormous economic and social distress.
father hero tyrants
My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.
strong democracy welfare
A democratic state is not proven by the welfare of the strong but by the welfare of the weak.