The Essential June Jordan
Published on 4. May 2021
Book
Paperback/Softback
256 pages
978-1-55659-620-9 (ISBN)
Description
June Jordan could renew any skeptic's faith in poetry. These poems gleam with jewel-like polish at the same time that they seem so effortlessly conversational one feels as if Jordan is in the room, expounding her endlessly complex and enlivening arc from outright outrage to generous love for herself, her partners, and all of us.
- June Jordan's poetry speaks pointedly to the present moment and fervent calls for social justice.
- Jordan spent half a century as one of the most admired, influential, and accessible public intellectuals in the United States. Her thinking still affects us to this day.
- Jordan's work was unflinchingly intersectional even before the call for activism to be intersectional because ubiquitous. Her work boldly explores the entanglements of her Blackness, femininity, bisexuality, etc and still provides an admirable model for such exploration.
- As well as being a poet, Jordan was an essayist, novelist, and even a librettist.
- Started the renowned arts and activism program Poetry for the People at UC Berkeley.
- Jordan's work, despite often speaking to particular instances of injustice or violence in the late twentieth century, echoes compellingly in the present day. As readers reach for Black voices to continue their learning about race and class in America, this volume will be waiting.
- Even as Jordan is frank and unequivocal about injustice in her poetry, she maintains a sure optimism, bringing hope to discouraged readers.
- Jordan also writes lush, honest love poems, attracting, potentially, a whole other audience to the volume.
- Jordan collaborated with architect R. Buckminster Fuller to create a radical concept for redesigning Harlem towards racial and environmental justice. The project, which never came to be, was called Skyrise for Harlem.
More details
Language
English
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Unsewn / adhesive bound
Dimensions
Height: 216 mm
Width: 140 mm
Thickness: 17 mm
Weight
390 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-55659-620-9 (9781556596209)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
June Jordan was born in Harlem in 1936 and was the author of ten books of poetry, seven collections of essays, two plays, a libretto, a novel, a memoir, five children's books, and June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint. As a professor at UC Berkeley, Jordan established Poetry for the People, a program to train student teachers to teach the power of poetry from a multicultural worldview. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and her articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms., Essence, and The Nation. After her death from breast cancer in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.