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A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan's multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.
This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that "we are the ones we have been waiting for." Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.
Featuring an introduction by alexis pauline gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, and Jordan's former students.
List of contents
Foreword: A Definition of Love by Alexis Pauline Gumbs
PART ONE: POET ON THE WORLD STAGE
In Response to "The Bombing of Baghdad" by June Jordan, Naomi Shihab Nye
Black Alive and Looking Straight at You: The Legacy of June Jordan, Elizabeth Alexander
It Began as a Romance: The Collaboration of June Jordan and Adrienne B. Torf, Adrienne B. Torf
Archive of a Bruise, Arc of the Blues, Alexis De Veaux
June Jordan and the Renaissance of Poetry as a Performing Art, Zack Rogow
Urban Ghazal, Zack Rogow
"A Report from the Bahamas": And What of Identity Politics? Margo Okazawa-Rey
Elegy for a Soldier, Marilyn Hacker
Letter to My Friend, for June Jordan, Kathy Engel
Puño en Alto! Libro Abierto! / Fists, Up! Books, Open!: On Anti-Intellectualism, Literacy Brigades, and Revolutionary Consciousness, Maria Poblet
The Set Up, Mahogany L. Browne
The Waters Are Wide: We Can Cross Over, Becky Thompson
Call and Response, Gwendolen Hardwick
PART TWO: WE ARE LUCKY SHE DARED
Some of Us Did Not Die, Remembering June Jordan, E. Ethelbert Miller
Bit by Bit, Dima Hilal
Elphinstone, Bombay 1993
"The Bombing of Baghdad": Building Connections in a Time of War, Shanti Bright Brien
Maestra, Xochiquetzal Candelaria
Dear June, Ruth Forman
not past, Ariel Luckey
A Blueprint for June's Love, Sheila Menenzes
Choosing a Praxis of Liberation, Kate Holbrook
On the Spirit of June Jordan: The Ultimate Capacities of a School's Lifeforce, Jessica Wei Huang
Stay All the Way with Reggie and Ranya, Reid Gómez
I choose/anything/anyone/I may lose: June Jordan, Faith, and Holy Risk, Dani Gabriel
Between the Knuckles of My Own Two Hands: Learning from June Jordan, Sriram Shamasunder
PART THREE: THE AWESOME, DIFFICULT WORK OF LOVE
A Place of Rage: A Conversation, Angela Y. Davis, Pratibha Parmar, and Leigh Raiford
So Long Our Sisters Love Us Strongly, Rachel Eliza Griffiths
In Response to "Apologies to All the People in Lebanon," adrienne maree brown
After June Jordan, A Poem About Police Violence, Jehan Bseiso
For the Sake of a People's Poetry: June Jordan and Walt Whitman, Donna Masini
Truth-Telling as an Emancipatory Act: What June Jordan Taught Me About Liberation, Elizabeth Riva Meyer
Finding "Living Room" with My Drone, Zeina Azzam
Love Like a Mango, Obvious, Will Horter
June Jordan: When All Things Are Dear Disappear, Wesley Brown
Something Like a Sonnet: Reading June Jordan, Finding My Voice, and Becoming an Oral Historian, Kelly Elaine Navies
Choosing My Mind Between the Mosquitos and the Moon, Ruth Nicole Brown
A Note on Praxis and Black Girls, Dominique C. Hill
Become a Menace, Afaa M. Weaver ¿¿¿
Afterword by Imani Perry
Acknowledgements
Notes
Bibliography
About the author
Becky Thompson is a scholar, poet, and activist. Her poetry collections include
To Speak in Salt (forthcoming) and
Zero Is the Whole I Fall into at Night. Her two edited volumes of poetry include
Making Mirrors: Righting/Writing by and for Refugees (with Palestinian poet, Jehan Bseiso) and
Fingernails across the Chalkboard: Poetry and Prose on HIV/AIDS from the Black Diaspora (co-edited with Randall Horton).
Lauren Muller taught with June Jordan at the University of California at Berkeley for many years. She was the editor of June Jordan's
Poetry for the People.
Dominique C. Hill is a qualitative researcher and body archivist of intergenerational survival through Black girlhood and Black queer resistance. A Black girlhood scholar and homegirl of Saving Our Lives Hear Our Truths (SOLHOT), Hill takes seriously cultivating spaces for Black girl freedom. Hill extends the possibilities of Black girlhood and vulnerability as an assistant professor of Women's Studies at Colgate University.
Durell M. Callier is an artist-scholar who employs Black feminist and queer methodologies to explore the interconnectivity of race, gender, sexuality, and culture. His research documents, analyzes, and interrogates the lived experiences of Black youth and their communities. Callier's scholarship illuminates how Black art and creative practices subvert, respond to, and reimagine Black life amidst anti-Black and anti-queer violence.
