June Jordan
June Jordan (July 9, 1936-June 14, 2002) was an African-American bisexual political activist, writer, poet, and teacher, born in Harlem, New York, to Jamaican immigrants.
Life
Jordan' father Granville Ivanhoe Jordan was a postal clerk, and her mother, Mildred, a nurse. When Jordan was five, the family moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn. She was the only black student in her high school. In 1953, Jordan enrolled at Barnard College. There she met a white Columbia University student, Michael Meyer. They married in 1955, and had a son, Christopher. The couple divorced in 1966.
Career
Jordan's first published book, Who Look at Me, appeared in 1969, was a collection of poems for children. Twenty-seven more books followed in her lifetime, one (Some of Us Did Not Die, Collected and New Essays) was in press when she died. One more has been published posthumously (a re-issue of the 1970 poetry collection "SoulScript", edited by Jordan). Publication of her Complete Poems is scheduled for Fall, 2005. Her autobiographical Soldier: A Poet's Childhood came out in 2000. She was also an essayist, columnist for The Progressive, novelist, biographer, and librettist for the musical/opera I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky, composed by John Adams and produced by Peter Sellars.
Jordan's teaching career began in 1967 at the City College of New York. She founded Poetry for the People at the University of California, Berkeley. She was a full professor in the departments of English, Women Studies, and African American Studies. She also taught at Yale University. Jordan died of breast cancer, at her home in Berkeley, California. The June Jordan School for Equity, formerly Small School for Equity, in San Francisco is named after her.
Bibliography
- Who Look at Me
- Soulscript (editor)
- The Voice of the Children (co-editor)
- Some Changes
- His Own Where
- Dry Victories
- Fannie Lou Hamer
- New Days
- New Life
- Things That I Do in the Dark
- Passion
- Kimako's Story
- Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poems, 1954-1977
- Civil Wars
- Living Room
- On Call
- Lyrical Campaigns
- Moving Towards Home
- Naming Our Destiny
- Technical Difficulties: African-American Notes on the State of the Union
- Technical Difficulties: New Political Essays
- Haruko Love Poems
- I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky
- June Jordan's Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint
- Civil Wars (new edition)
- Kissing God Goodbye
- Affirmative Acts
- Soldier
- Some of Us Did Not Die
- Soulscript: A Collection of Classic African American Poetry (editor, reprint)
- Directed by Desire: The Complete Poems of June Jordan (due out in Fall, 2005)
External links
- "June Jordan." The Guardian. Busby, Margaret., June 20, 2002.
- June Jordan. Accessed on February 6, 2005.
- Review of Jordan's April 10, 1999
- "June Jordan, 65, Poet and Political Activist, Dies." Smith, Dinitia, New York Times. June 18, 2002.
- Audio Interview with Jordan
- PBS New York Writers Link