We're on a June Jordan reader edited by Christoph Keller & Jan Heller Levi ; introduction by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Object Details

Notes: DONOR NOTE: Ripley Endowment
Contents: "No one will move anywhere but up": Jordan on space, community, architecture, & design for humans (1964-1971) -- "Who would paint a people black or white?": Who look at me (1969) & Soulscript (1970) -- "Honey people murder mercy U.S.A.": Some changes (1967, 1971) -- "If it's wrong in standard English it's probably right in Black English, or, at least, you're hot": Jordan on the politics of language (1972-1985) -- "They mining the rivers/We making love real": from New days: poems of exile and return (1974) -- "Jewels of our soul": Jordan on Countee Cullen's anthology Caroling Dusk, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes & Phillis Wheatley (1974-1985) -- "I must become a menace to my enemies": from Things that I do in the dark: new and selected poems (1977) -- "This is my perspective, and this is my faith": Jordan on her life and work (1977-2000) -- "So hot so hot so hot so what/so hot so what so hot so hot": Collaborations: theater, music, teaching, poetry (1981-1996) -- "We are the ones we have been waiting for": from Passion: New Poems 1977-1980 (1980) & from Civil Wars: Observations from the Front Lines of America (1981) -- "I need to talk about living room/Because I need to talk about home": from On Call: Political Essays (1985) & from LIving Room: New Poems (1985) -- "Every night the waters of the world": from Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems 1985-1989 (1989) -- "Misbegotten American dreams have maimed us all": from Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union (1992) -- "Let me be very/very/very/very/very/specific": from Haruko/Love Poems: New and Selected Love Poems (1993), from Kissing God Goodbye: Poems 1991-1997 (1997) & from Affirmative Acts: Political Essays (1998) -- "I guess it was my destiny to live so long": from her last poems (1997-2002) in Directed by Desire: the Collected Poems of June Jordan (2005) & from Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays (2002)
Summary: "Poet, activist, and essayist June Jordan is a prolific, significant American writer who pushed the limits of political vision and moral witness, traversing a career of over forty years. With poetry, prose, letters, and more, this reader is a key resource for understanding the scope, complexity, and novelty of this pioneering Black American writer. From "Poem about Police Violence": Tell me something what you think would happen if everytime they kill a black boy then we kill a cop everytime they kill a black man then we kill a cop you think the accident rate would lower subsequently?. I lose consciousness of ugly bestial rabid and repetitive affront as when they tell me 18 cops in order to subdue one man 18 strangled him to death in the ensuing scuffle (don't you idolize the diction of the powerful: subdue and scuffle my oh my) and that the murder that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn street was just a "justifiable accident" again (again) People been having accidents all over the globe so long like that I reckon that the only suitable insurance is a gun"-- Provided by publisher

Data Source: Smithsonian Libraries

Date: 2017

author: Jordan, June 1936-2002
editor: Keller, Christoph 1963-; Levi, Jan Heller
writer of introduction: Griffiths, Rachel Eliza

Type: Poetry; Poésie; Essay; Literary collections; Essays; LITERARY COLLECTIONS / American / General; POETRY / American / African American; Essais

Physical description: 489 pages 23 cm

Title: We are on

Topic: American poetry--African American authors; African Americans; Poetry--African American; Poésie américaine--Auteurs noirs américains; Noirs américains; LITERARY COLLECTIONS--American--General; POETRY--American--African American; American; African American

Record ID: siris_sil_1153613

Usage: CC0