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 thinking
Our children will not survive our habits of thinking, our failures of the spirit, our wreck of the universe into which we bring new life as blithely as we do. Mostly, our children will resemble our own misery and spite and anger, because we give them no choice about it. 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.
father commitment thinking
As I think about anyone or anything -- whether history or literature or my father or political organizations or a poem or a film -- as I seek to evaluate the potentiality, the life-supportive commitment and possibilities of anyone or any thing, the decisive question is always where is the love?
thinking rights white
In America, you can segregate the people, but the problems will travel. From slavery to equal rights, from state suppression of dissent to crime, drugs and unemployment, I can't think of a supposedly Black issue that hasn't wasted the original Black target group and then spread like measles to outlying white experience.
thinking able honest
I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.
thinking firsts telling-the-truth
The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think
suicide thinking survival
suicide is absolute, and if you think you will survive by hiding who you really are, you are sadly misled: there is no such thing as partial or intermittent suicide. You can only survive if you - who you really are - do survive.
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.