Read Anywhere and on Any Device!

Subscribe to Read | $0.00

Join today and start reading your favorite books for Free!

Create Free Account

We're On: A June Jordan Reader

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

4.3/5 ( ratings)

"June Jordan was not the blacksmith's daughter. June Jordan was the blacksmith. . . . She never waited around, not for anyone's permission, to write or act or be. . . . For this book to have its birth now, in the lopsided moment when we need it most, is no chance occurrence. This great woman blacksmith is still sweetly hammering us on." —Nikky Finney

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 and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again

People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun

Language: English

Pages: 500

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Alice James Books

Release: September 12, 2017

ISBN: 193858435X

ISBN 13: 9781938584350

We're On: A June Jordan Reader

Rachel Eliza Griffiths

4.3/5 ( ratings)

"June Jordan was not the blacksmith's daughter. June Jordan was the blacksmith. . . . She never waited around, not for anyone's permission, to write or act or be. . . . For this book to have its birth now, in the lopsided moment when we need it most, is no chance occurrence. This great woman blacksmith is still sweetly hammering us on." —Nikky Finney

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 and that the murder
that the killing of Arthur Miller on a Brooklyn
street was just a "justifiable accident" again

People been having accidents all over the globe
so long like that I reckon that the only
suitable insurance is a gun

Language: English

Pages: 500

Format: Paperback

Publisher: Alice James Books

Release: September 12, 2017

ISBN: 193858435X

ISBN 13: 9781938584350

More books from Rachel Eliza Griffiths

Lighting the Shadow

4.1/5 ( ratings)

Mule Pear

4.3/5 ( ratings)

Rate this book!

Write a review?