WOMEN'S SECTION

Plato Negro and

the Woman at the Well

A woman asked Plato why are the youth out of control ? He replied that youth are out of control because adults are out of control and youth observe then emulate their behavior. Even during the revolutionary 60s, the militants, who are the fathers and mothers of today’s youth, were guilty of contradictions, or saying one thing but doing another. They talked black power but went home to beat their wives and women. They preached discipline but were guilty of drug abuse and abuse of power. Much of our behavior was patriarchal white supremacy actions that debased women, considering them less than human. Of course we learned this behavior from our white supremacy socialization. True enough, there were many good things we learned and achieved during that time, and many sincere and honest people gave their lives for the cause of freedom. But if we had been of more sober minds, we would have been able to detect agent provocateurs and snitches. We would have been able to see through the US Government’s counter intelligence program or Cointelpro. With sobriety and discipline, we might have been able to show our children better examples of male/female relations, and perhaps today’s youth would be more respectful of women, elders and peers. The woman asked Plato what can be done today to reconnect with our children ? Plato said we must embrace them with unconditional love and do not abuse them, physically, sexually or otherwise. Do not show them contradictory behavior, saying one thing but doing the opposite. We must not say we are about freedom, yet make their mothers slaves in the home, treating them with abuse that the children observe. Many children have been abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They are without mother or father. Many are living in foster homes, the result of parental drug and sexual abuse. Adults must stop being predators and instead be mentors and guides. The youth want and seek our wisdom, but we must reach out to them because many are terrified of us just as we are terrified of them. It is communal insanity when we allow children to rule our community, making us afraid to go outside at night, afraid to go to the store. But we can only take back control of our community by reconnecting and embracing our children, no matter how painful it is for us and them. We must make amends to them for our wickedness and then demand of them the same. Yes, they must apologize to the elders they have harmed and disrespected. What we are talking about is the urgent need for a healing session between youth and adults, a time and space where we can gather to admit our mistakes and promise to do better now and in the future. We must, youth and adults, swallow our pride and reconnect. We cannot allow the chaos to continue because we know things go from bad to worse, if we do not address the issues. Nothing is going to change until we change our thinking and actions. We must rise up from animal to divine. The tide is turning because you are turning the tide! Mothers and fathers who are separated must come together for the sake of their children, if only for a moment. When children see parents reconciling, they will do likewise. No matter the pain of the past, adults must show the way to community unity. Why shouldn’t youth resort to violence, after all, they see adults resolving their conflicts with violence? Adults cannot get out of our responsibility to show the way, to guide and mentor. Every youth is our child, thus our responsibility to show the right way. Give youth a chance, support them when they are selling items other than dope, such as DVDs, CDs, gear and other items to get their hustle on in a legal way. At least they are not killing to make a dollar, so reach out to them. Hug a thug before the thug hugs you! The woman seemed to understand the wisdom of Plato. Although frustrated to the max, she said she would try to reach out to youth, rather than simply complain about their behavior and shortcomings. --Dr. M

For more Wisdom of Plato Negro, please go to this section.

Million Woman Movement

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Somali woman stoned for adultery

A 20-year-old woman divorcee accused of committing adultery in Somalia has been stoned to death by Islamists in front of a crowd of about 200 people. A judge working for the militant group al-Shabab said she had had an affair with an unmarried 29-year-old man. He said she gave birth to a still-born baby and was found guilty of adultery. Her boyfriend was given 100 lashes. It is thought to be the second time a woman has been stoned to death for adultery by al-Shabab. The group controls large swathes of southern Somalia where they have imposed a strict interpretation of Islamic law which has been unpopular with many Somalis. 'Lenient' According to reports from a small village near the town of Wajid, 250 miles (400km) north-west of the capital, Mogadishu, the woman was taken to the public grounds where she was buried up to her waist. The Islamists want to impose a strict version of Sharia on Somalia. She was then stoned to death in front of the crowds on Tuesday afternoon. The judge, Sheikh Ibrahim Abdirahman, said her unmarried boyfriend was given 100 lashes at the same venue. Under al-Shabab's interpretation of Sharia law, anyone who has ever been married - even a divorcee - who has an affair is liable to be found guilty of adultery, punishable by stoning to death. An unmarried person who has sex before marriage is liable to be given 100 lashes. BBC East Africa correspondent Will Ross says the stoning is at least the fourth for adultery in Somalia over the last year. Earlier this month, a man was stoned to death for adultery in the port town of Merka, south of Mogadishu. His pregnant girlfriend was spared, until she gives birth. A girl was stoned to death for adultery in the southern town of Kismayo last year. Human rights groups said she was 13 years old and had been raped, but the Islamists said she was older and had been married. Last month, two men were stoned to death in Merka after being accused of spying. President Sheikh Sharif Sheikh Ahmed, a moderate Islamist, was sworn in as president after UN-brokered peace talks in January. Although he says he also wants to implement Sharia, al-Shabab says his version of Islamic law would be too lenient. The country has not had a functioning national government for 18 years.

Comment
by Marvin X

Imagine all the people likely to be stoned to death in America if Islamic Sharia law were imposed. Because of the many backward notions in religions due to primitive mythology, I wrote Beyond Religion, toward Spirituality. Religion has outlived any usefulness in today's world. It is the cause of violence in the home, in the street and numerous wars across the planet, e.g., Christian Crusaders occupying Muslim lands throughout the Middle East and Africa. The Christians are as backward, dogmatic and narrow minded as Muslims. What right do they have to impose democracy or any part of their warped, hypocritical moral vision on people when they have yet come to terms with the cross and the lynching tree. Can religion be summed up as man's attempt to control women? She outsmarted, fooled and deceived Adam in the Garden and has suffered ever since.So her body, mind and soul must be guarded against, watched over and never allowed an iota of freedom. She is thus the property of men who "maintain" her even though today women are often quite able to maintain themselves and men, yet the man "pays the cost to be the boss," though this may be an illusion, a figment of his imagination from times past. Whether it is gang rape, partner violence, emotional and verbal abuse, the woman suffers greatly from the men she loves--again, the concept of honor killings reveal that even her father, brothers, husband, uncle, cousins, may seek her life if she steps outside the door of primitive patriarchal mythology found in the various religions. In the church she is condemned for being a "church ho" but her preacher is forgiven--even rewarded for "pimping in the name of the Lord."

Rape and Mythology

The recent rape of the young lady at Richmond High School reveals the urgency of my monograph The Mythology of Pussy. Yes, the title may be abhorrent and offensive to many, but the content is essential manhood and womanhood training that speaks directly to how youth can become socialized beyond the patriarchal mythology that is totally dysfunctional in the global village—a socialization that breeds animal and savage behavior in men and often women who are taught values of domination, ownership,violence, emotional and verbal abuse. Rape is the ultimate expression of the patriarchal or male dominated society wherein the female has no value other than as a sexual animal that must serve men at every turn, willingly or unwillingly. So how can we be shocked when we know this society was founded upon rape, kidnapping, murder—the total exploitation of human beings. America is the place where women had their bellies cut open and lynched along with men during our enslavement. Even as we speak, America is raping, torturing, murdering and exploiting poor people around the world, from Iraq to Afghanistan and Pakistan. She is endorsing such behavior throughout the Americas, in Mexico, Guatemala, and Columbia. All for the profit motive, for the glories of capitalism. Yet, little Johnny is supposed to behave peacefully in the hood—he is supposed to act civilized in spite of his poverty, ignorance and disease. His ghetto life is the culture of violence—and it is merely a reflection of the larger society of violence—violence in the news, movies, books, sports, and yes, sex. America cannot tell little Johnny not to rape when she goes around the world raping! But we cannot only blame America because such animal behavior is worldwide—even as I write, women, men and children are being raped in the Congo, Sudan and South Africa. They were raped in the Balkans, Iraq and all wars throughout history. Women are called “the spoils of war” or “booty.” Every soldier knows women are the prize they get for killing “the enemy.” The youth in Richmond were acting out the same behavior we did as teenagers when I grew up in Fresno. As teenagers, my friends used to gang rape every Sunday at the show—every Sunday girls were taken behind the movie screen while we sat eating popcorn and watched the white man kill Indians—and in our ignorance, some of us cheered the slaughter of the Native Americans, even while many of us had Native American blood in our veins. And if the girls were not gang raped behind the screen, they were raped on the train yard as we crossed the tracks going home to the projects. We called gang rape “pulling a train” on the girl. The boys lined up to wait their turn—just as in the Richmond case, nobody said stop, this is wrong, this is criminal, this is somebody’s sister. This was our culture, thus normal behavior. If you didn’t engage in this behavior you were considered a “punk.” Gang rape was thus part of expressing manhood—it was the only mythology we knew. Violence was not only toward women, but toward other men as well. We went to the show to fight Mexicans because few whites came to our theatre—we wanted to fight the whites but the Mexicans were a reasonable facsimile. We went to the dance and concerts to fight Mexicans and brothers from “the country,” since we considered ourselves “city nigguhs.” Yes, we were city nigguhs who picked cotton, cut grapes and pitched watermelons almost as much as the so-called country nigguhs. Violence against woman and men will not end until we deconstruct the mythology of the patriarchal or male dominated culture globally—rape is happening worldwide—it is an epidemic in South Africa. Even before the Richmond incident, a brother told me how the young women are raped in hotel rooms downtown Oakland. He pointed out to me the girls walking pass my outdoor classroom at 14th and Broadway—he said all of them have been given drugs in drinks and then raped. As long as the mythology of world culture (including the religions of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, African traditional religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, et al) promotes the domination of women, rape shall the ultimate expression. As long as men are taught women are chattel or personal property, rape will persist, along with domestic and partner violence, verbal and emotional violence. We must understand rape has nothing to do with sex—rape is an act of violence! It is an expression of power, control, authority, domination. Religion perpetuates such violence by promoting male authority and ownership. The religious community must be prepared to make radical and revolutionary changes in its theology, mythology and ritual. It must rid its theology of women as chattel or personal property of men. We are descendants of slaves, yet our relationships are the embodiment of slavery with the resulting partner violence, verbal and emotional abuse. The sad truth is that the religious community or leadership cannot advocate changing traditional values because to do so would decrease the power of leadership, a leadership that is often guilty of the same said violence, rape, domination and exploitation of females—and often males! The only solution is radical and revolutionary manhood and womanhood rites of passage, wherein young men and women evolve to see themselves as spiritual beings in human form. I will end with a quote from a poem by Phavia Kujichagulia, “If you think I am just a physical thing, wait til you see the spiritual power I bring.” I encourage the reader to obtain a copy of my Mythology of Pussy: A Manual for Manhood and Womanhood Rites of Passage. Go to www.marvinxwrites.blogspot.com. I just returned from a national tour promoting this monograph—I dropped seeds in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Washington DC, Philadelphia, Newark, NJ, and Harlem, NY. It is indeed sad to return home to the Bay Area and learn of the incident in Richmond. We must stand up from animal to divine—from bestiality to spirituality.



IS THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

KILLING BLACK WOMEN PROFESSORS?

"Sherley A. Williams didn't die of cancer but from the University of California, San

Diego!"--Dr. William H. Grier, co-author, Black Rage

Cara Stanley
Good morning, I believe the issue of Black women dying in their prime is more complicated than a hostile white environment. America is a hostile environment for Black people. I think how we as Black women are socialized plays a tremendous role in our dying far too soon. We are taught at an early age to forego our own needs, wants and desires for the good of the community. The politics of respectability place a heavy burden on the backs of Black women along with the tacit responsibility of being strong for everyone in every situation. I did not know Sherley Williams, but I did know June, Barbara and VeVe.
What I do know as a Black Cal graduate and Cal staff member for the past twenty years, is that these three sisters loved Black people. They took it upon themselves to support and mentor others in ways that many of their colleagues did not. They internalized the legacy of Race women and modeled commitment to and responsibility for the greater community.
What I think killed them, was how we as a larger community, admired and loved them from afar, yet we allowed them to not take care of themselves. We tend to glamorize the Black women soldiers without supporting and loving them. Black women are visible only when they are serving someone else or when we are dead. In our daily living, we are ignored, pushed aside, and treated as not being worthy of nurturing, loving or resting.
Otherwise, why we would sit silent as Black women die from AIDS, breast cancer, ovarian cancer, high blood pressure, obesity etc. Where is the call to save the endangered Black women? Why aren't Jesse and Al marching to bring attention to the health crisis of Black women? If you think I am over dramatizing the issue, I ask one simple question, Why are our Black men in the same environments not dying in similar ways? Gender plays an important role in the way we live as Black people in America . I challenge us to love one another as Black people. Let's make sure that we love ourselves enough to take time to make sure that we are healthy, sleeping, eating good diets, exercising and getting help with our depression. We are constantly in the pressure cooker of racist micro-aggressions and we need to manage them in productive ways. Alcohol , sex and drugs are not solutions, they just take the edge off. It is with love for Barbara, June and VeVe, and Black people that I write this. Ache, --Cara

Marvin X

Cara, thank you so much for your kind words. I hesitate to reply before digesting them thoroughly since there is much truth in your remarks. Of course all black people live and work in a generally hostile environment, even though many would claim they have a "good job" free of racism--for the most part, this is simply denial.
As per working with white people, very few of them have deconstructed their white supremacy thinking and behavior, thus we are sometimes subtle victims of their dominating actions, resulting in us contracting their dis-eases, leading, yes, to death.
Black men are not dying in academia because in many cases they have been excluded, so they have the luxury of dying in the streets like common dogs. Even our high profile brothers go out this way. Yes, women have a tremendous burden, aside from being women, they must often dawn the persona of men, especially when forced to be the sole parent. And clearly, strong black women find it difficult to secure a mate who is their equal, who understands them intellectually and spiritually, and who is determined to stand and stay with them until death do us part.
But conscious women and men must of necessity go far beyond the call of duty in teaching and mentoring. And yes, it is many times a thankless job, yet we push on with unconditional love, simply because it is our duty to "teach the uncivilized." But we are often guilty, men and women, of not following that adage: physician heal thyself.
In our love of community, we ignore self love and healing. We sacrifice everything until we are physically and mentally exhausted--the body tired and diseased because we are lazy with caring for self, rejuvenating self, taking time for RR, continuously ignoring the fact that our health is our wealth.
As a man, I am guilty of neglecting myself, especially when it comes to exercise and socializing. I am addicted to sitting on my behind at the computer, even when a walk in the woods is at my doorstep. This is laziness pure and simple.
As per women, I have lost female friends and lovers who died from smoking, drugs, alcohol and other addictions. As a result, I am traumatized when I see a woman with a cigarette in her mouth. And the fact that HIV/AIDS is the leading cause of death among black women 24 to 34 is agonizing, especially since I have three daughters in this age range.
But as you say, where is the alarm bells for the health epidemic in our community, especially among our women. We seem to think our problems will be solved by singing Silent Night. In truth, they will only be solved by individual and collective action, by all of us standing together as a conscious force for radical healing and liberation. We cannot isolate ourselves in academia, rather we must reach out to the community in general, letting them know we are one and indivisible. We who are educators must be like the professor in Akila and the Bee, determinded to assist the ghetto child while in the process healing himself.

Peace,

Marvin X

VèVè Clark, cosmopolitan African diaspora scholar, dies at 62

By Yasmin Anwar

VèVè Amasasa Clark, an associate professor of African American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and a literary scholar who coined the term "diaspora literacy," died Dec. 1 at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley after being found at home in a coma. She was 62. During her 16 years on the African American studies faculty at UC Berkeley, Clark became an expert on such topics as African oral expression and the Francophone novel. She was instrumental in helping create at UC Berkeley the nation's first doctorate program in African diaspora studies. "Her theorization of 'diaspora literacy' has functioned as a model for numerous scholars in the field, here in the United States and in the Caribbean. She will be sadly missed," said Suzette Spencer, an assistant professor of African American studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and a former student of Clark's.

Clark's urbane manner was reinforced by her multilingualism. She spoke fluent French, Spanish and Creole and had a fair understanding of Wolof, a language spoken in Senegal, Gambia and Mauritania. She co-edited "The Legend of Maya Deren" (1985), a biography of the avant-garde filmmaker and theorist; and "Kaiso! Katherine Dunham: An Anthology of Writings" (1978), about the iconic dancer and choreographer who died last year. "She was the epitome of a brilliant scholar, passionate thinker, gifted writer and master teacher," said Ula Taylor, chair of UC Berkeley's Department of African American Studies. "As a colleague, she was a woman of integrity who was committed to encouraging younger faculty to embrace their own intellectual voice." As a mentor and champion for black scholarship, Clark worked on the retention of African American students and sought to provide a support network for graduate students in African American, African and Caribbean studies.

What many students loved most was how she challenged them academically and intellectually. "She could think so far out of the box, it was mind-blowing," said Lisa Ze Winters, an assistant professor of English and Africana studies at Wayne State University, Detroit, and a former student of Clark's. "Even as she pushed you, told you that your work could be better, you knew she really wanted you to succeed, to exceed your own expectations. In her mind, there were no limits."

Clark was born Dec. 14, 1944, and grew up in the New York City borough of Queens. She was the only child of Alonso Clark, who was from North Carolina and belonged to the worldwide historic Freemasonry fraternity, and of her Caribbean mother. VèVè Clark was extremely close to her father, friends said. Both her parents are deceased. As a child, Clark first contemplated becoming a doctor and then a musician, according to an interview she did in 1996 when she became the inaugural recipient of UC Berkeley's Social Sciences Distinguished Service Award.

As an undergraduate in Queens College at the City University of New York, Clark majored in romance languages. After receiving her bachelor's degree in 1966, she continued her language studies at the Université de Nancy in France, where she received a certificate d'études supérieures.

She returned to Queens College and received her master's degree in French in 1969. During the 1970s, Clark headed west to UC Berkeley, where she worked as a teaching assistant in French and then as a lecturer in what was then called Afro-American studies. She also taught French at an experimental collegiate seminar program on campus that was known informally as Strawberry Creek College.

Daphne Muse, director of the Women's Leadership Institute at Mills College in Oakland, met Clark in 1973, when they were both teaching at UC Berkeley. The two quickly became close friends, and Clark officiated at Muse's wedding. "She would have me on the floor in tears with laughter. She had an uncanny ability to mimic, and she was just brilliant," said Muse. "She was also incredibly generous, both spiritually and financially." In 1980, Clark was hired as an assistant professor of African and Caribbean literature at Tufts University in Massachusetts. During that time, she worked on her Ph.D. thesis in French and ethnology for UC Berkeley and received her degree in 1983. In 1985, she received a faculty research award from Tufts to attend the United Nations Conference for Women in Nairobi. A year later, Clark was promoted at Tufts to associate professor of African and Caribbean literature. In 1991, she returned to UC Berkeley as an associate professor of African American studies. That same year, Clark won recognition for coining the phrase "diaspora literacy" in a paper titled "Developing Diaspora Literature and Marasa Consciousness."

She defined the term as the ability to understand multi-layered meanings of stories, words and folk sayings in African diaspora communities through the knowledge and lived experiences of the community members' cultures. Her method of using literature to convey experiences inspired students to look beyond dry surveys and interviews for their research. That was the case for Erin Winkler, who took Clark's "Diasporic Dialogues" course during her first year in graduate school at UC Berkeley. "As a social scientist who researches children's developing understandings of race, I was not sure how a literature course would speak to my work," said Winkler, an assistant professor of Africology at the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee. But Clark encouraged Winkler to use coming-of-age novels in her research, said Winkler, "because they speak to experiences of race in ways that sometimes go unspoken in surveys or interviews.

What she modeled in her own scholarship had a profound impact on my development as an interdisciplinary scholar." During Clark's career, she received numerous awards, including a Guggenheim fellowship for research on choreographer Katherine Dunham and a graduate fellowship for study at the Université de Dakar, Sénégal. She also was a Rockefeller Foundation fellow-in-residence at Brown University.

In 1996, after winning UC Berkeley's first Social Sciences Distinguished Service award for "service that benefits undergraduate and/or graduate students," Clark explained to an interviewer her passion for fostering a new generation of black scholars. "We're all trained in something else: English, political science, French, sociology," she said of her own generation. "How many Ph.D.s do we have who actually came though in African American studies or African diaspora studies? So, it's exciting to me that we are about to develop a generation in this field." Trica Danielle Keaton, an assistant professor of American studies and global studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, fondly refers to Clark's adages as "VèVèisms." "'Joining the ancestors,' a precious VèVèism, is not an ending, but rather a transition, something that feels akin to one of VèVè's 'zen moves' to higher and safer ground," Keaton said. "I am humbled by the love that she bestowed on us, her 'intellectual daughters and sons.' Indeed, I am honored to be but one of so very many touched by her genius and generosity." Clark is survived by a wide circle of friends, colleagues and students. A memorial gathering in celebration of her life and legacy will be held on Friday, Dec. 14, from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the Lipman Room in UC Berkeley's Barrows Hall.

Sherley Anne Williams
Williams, Sherley Anne (1944–1999), poet, novelist, critic, professor, and social critic. The life and career of Sherley Anne Williams reveal why she is a major cultural and literary force in the African American and the larger multicultural American community. Williams, who teaches at the University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, was born in Bakersfield, California, on 25 August 1944. She earned a bachelor of arts in English in 1966 and a master's in 1972 from California State University at Fresno and Brown University, respectively. She then went on to teach at several schools and to travel to Ghana under a 1984 Fulbright grant. As scholar, critic, writer, poet and parent, her range extends from adult to child and from academia to popular culture. Like Sterling A. Brown, one of her mentors and role models, she manages to traverse several worlds, and this ability to extend her voice past the literary and into the ever-expanding field of African American cultural forms has been an invaluable contribution to African American literary studies.As a scholar and critic Williams attributes great worth to exploring African American folk culture and her literary criticism attests to this fact. The best and perhaps most well-known example is her first endeavor, Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature (1972), a groundbreaking examination of the toast-and-boast traditions. Here she infuses the black aesthetic poetry of the 1960s (e.g., Mari Evans, Michael S. Harper, Amiri Baraka, Etheridge Knight, David Henderson and Don L. Lee) into the beginning of each chapter to serve as an intertext and implicit statement that these poets are the next wave of heroes. She reviews how heroism manifests itself along class lines in African American poetry, drama and prose, in music and performers, and from folklore and history to the urban outlaw. In the process of recording her findings she ensures the position of heroism as a viable element of African American literary studies.One element of folk culture that informs William's writing, both critical and creative, is “call and response.” She writes as a response to other things that have been written or spoken and that affect the community, and this is an interesting example of the African American cultural phenomenon call and response performing her. Seen in this light, Williams's dedicating her first work to her son serves as a means of answering questions he may have about his history, and as a way of leaving him a legacy. This gesture represents the larger unspoken thesis of this work, for in investigating the boasts and toasts that come from the urban folk community, Williams affirms that there is an African American cultural legacy that has been passed down for years, that has mutated, and that will continue to mutate into many forms. Her recording and analyzing this work, as well as addressing it to her son, is a step in the process of passing the lore to the next generation. It seems that for Williams to have the scholarly analysis, the critic must converse with and receive affirmation from the folk community.As a creative writer she invests great pride in African American musical forms and history. While Give Birth to Brightness explores primarily male authors and provides an overview of folk heroism, Williams's creative endeavors focus primarily on women. Dessa Rose (1986), her critically acclaimed historical novel, or neo-slave narrative, is based on the blues, for it tells of a solitary woman's experience of love thwarted, of bondage, revolt, freedom and of love regained. This follows the blue's aaba structure, because it repeats and varies a central theme: Dessa's story. Williams, as well, infuses spirituals into Dessa Rose and shows how they worked as a means of coded communication, for they help Dessa to escape imprisonment. In keeping with Williams's methodology, this work is also a response to William Styron's flawed historical fiction The Confessions of Nat Turner (1967). Through musical form and the assertion of a female slave rebellion, Williams reclaims history, revises the racial memory of slavery and invests herself with the right to record an African American woman's silenced history.Another way to record a silenced voice is through poetry, and Williams's first attempt at this is in The Peacock Poems (1975) and Someone Sweet Angel Chile (1982). She structures these works as well on the blues and spirituals. The poetry incorporates these musical modes in that they talk of an artist's alienation and heroic survival as she struggles to express her feelings and hopes for understanding. The blues also fit perfectly as a means of expressing the lyrical, for their subject matter articulates the historically isolated and silenced African American female voice. Underlying these blues poems is the theme of lost love and misunderstanding among men and women, and again this is Williams responding to a folk community that is at times split by miscommunication. In reaching out and embracing that communication, Williams exhorts the need for spiritual connection, mutual understanding, and respect, for these are the things that give men and women, the folk community, and the individual, life.Working Cotton (1992) is Williams's latest creation, and it addresses perhaps the most important aspect that gives the folk community life and meaning: the children. It is a gesture that mirrors the dedication of her first work to her son, for this award-winning children's story is dedicated to her grandchildren and to the migrant laborers and their families, whose voices continue to be silenced. Working Cotton is a message of hope, pride, and regard for the sheer determination it takes to survive and still see beauty amongst so much harshness. It is written in the blues mode, and Williams, in recording a young girl's (Shelan's) experiences working in the fields with her family, praises the folk community for its endurance. This is her way of embracing one segment of the African American community, and in so doing she again affirms and documents a way of life and a worldview so that future generations will know a part of their history.Williams's works reveal a bond to folk traditions and history, and a desire to generate, appreciate, and preserve them for future generations. For Williams, this is the role of the academician, and as teacher, writer, social critic, and parent, her efforts responding to the folk community mark her as an integral force in African American letters.

Bibliography

Shirley M. Jordan, “Sherley Anne Williams,” in Black Women Writers At Work, ed. Claudia Tate, 1983. pp. 205–213.

Mary Kemp Davis, “Everybody Knows Her Name: The Recovery of the Past in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose,” Callaloo 40.1 (1989): 544–558.

Mae G. Henderson, “(W)riting The Work and Working the Rites,” Black American Literature Forum 23.4 (Winter 1989): 631–660.

Anne E. Goldman, “I Made the Ink”: (Literary) Production and Reproduction in Dessa Rose and Beloved,” Feminist Studies 16.2 (Summer 1990): 313–330.

Marta E. Sanchez, “The Estrangement Effect in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose,” Genders 15 (Winter 1992): 21–36.

Sherley Anne Williams, interview by Shirley M. Jordan, in Broken Silences: Interviews With Black and White Women Writers, ed. Shirley M. Jordan, 1993, pp. 285–301.

Farah Jasmine Griffin, “Textual Healing: Claiming Black Women's Bodies, the Erotic and Resistance in Contemporary Novels of Slavery,” Callaloo 19:2 (Spring 1996): 519–536.

Mae G. Henderson, ‘The Stories of O(Dessa): Stories of Complicity and Resistance,”’ in Female Subjects in Black and White: Race, Psychoanalysis, Feminism, ed. Elizabeth Abel, et al., 1997, pp. 285–304

byMildred R. Mickle

Barbara Christian

literary critic; scholar; educator

Personal Information
Born on December 12, 1943, in St. Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands; died on June 25, 2000, in Berkeley, CA; divorced; children: NajumaEducation: Marquette University, AB, 1963; Columbia University, MA, 1964, PhD, with honors, 1970.Memberships: Modern Language Association of America; National Women's Studies Association; National Council for Black Studies; Women's Studies Board.
Career
College of the Virgin Islands, instructor in English, 1963; Hunter College, New York City, instructor in English, 1963-64; City College of the City University of New York, New York City, lecturer, 1965-70, assistant professor of English, 1971-72; University of California, Berkeley, lecturer, 1971-72, assistant professor, 1972-78, associate professor and chairperson of Afro-American studies, 1978-86, professor of African-American studies and president of Women's Studies Board, 1986-2000.
Life's Work
Barbara T. Christian was an influential feminist literary scholar and critic, acclaimed for her landmark critical works, Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition and Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers. She was also highly respected as a scholar, administrator, and teacher at the University of California, Berkeley, where she taught for more than 25 years. A champion of the work of contemporary black writers, including Alice Walker, Paule Marshall, and Toni Morrison, Christian also spearheaded the rediscovery of earlier writers like Zora Neale Hurston and Nella Larsen.
Barbara Theresa Christian was born on December 12, 1943, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, one of six children of Alphonso Christian, a judge, and his wife, Ruth. A voracious reader and brilliant student, she was admitted to Marquette University in Wisconsin at the age of 15 and graduated cum laude in 1963. Although her family wanted her to pursue a career in medicine, Christian chose instead to study her growing passion, literature, at Columbia University--a location chosen, she later said, because of its proximity to Harlem. In 1970 she was awarded a doctorate, with distinction, in contemporary British and American writing.
At Columbia, Christian developed an interest in the work of black writers, few of whom had been embraced at that time by the American literary canon. Christian was already aware of the apparent absence of a black tradition. In the introduction to Black Feminist Criticism, she recalled her life "as a young girl in the Caribbean, gobbling up Nancy Drew books ... [aware of] the privileges of Nancy's world.... What black girl protagonist competed with her?" Christian's doctoral thesis, "Spirit Bloom in Harlem: The Search for a Black Aesthetic during the Harlem Renaissance: The Poetry of Claude McKay, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer," reflected her growing interest in uncovering and defining an ongoing literary tradition.
Began University Teaching Career
Harlem was a fertile center for the political activists of the civil rights movement of the 1960s, and Christian found herself part of a confident new black intellectual elite, their activities centered around the bookstore run by Lewis Micheaux, brother of pioneering black filmmaker Oscar Micheaux. She was also a visitor to the home of Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes, and Hughes' personal secretary introduced her to Zora Neale Hurston's forgotten masterpiece, Her Eyes Were Watching God.
While still a graduate student, Christian taught briefly at the College of the Virgin Islands and at Hunter College in New York City. She worked at the City College of the City University of New York while completing her doctoral thesis, becoming assistant professor of English in 1970. At the City College, Christian was also an instructor in the SEEK program (Search for Education, Elevation, and Knowledge), which gave access to higher education to promising but underprivileged students. Her participation in this groundbreaking program possibly informed her lifelong support for affirmative action, and helped establish her reputation as a dedicated and resourceful teacher.
In September of 1971 Christian joined the faculty of the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley. The young academic was by no means typical of the faculty. "Not only was I a woman and black, but I was also pregnant when I first arrived," she was quoted as saying in her obituary in the St. Croix Source. In 1972, Christian received a request from students to teach a course on black women writers. Developing the curriculum for the course, her professional interests found their focus, and she was instrumental in the establishment that year of Berkeley's Department of Afro-American Studies. Christian was to teach in this department for the rest of her life, serving as chair of the department from 1978 to 1983, and as chair of Berkeley's new Ethnic Studies doctoral program from 1986 to 1989. A dedicated activist with a strong commitment to community education, she also served as founding member and teacher of the University without Walls, an alternative college for people of color, from 1971 to 1976.
In 1978, Christian taught a seminar at Berkeley on the work of Alice Walker, "a course that had not been taught there before, or possibly anywhere else," she noted in an essay introduction in Black Feminist Criticism. In that same year, she became the first African-American woman to be granted tenure at Berkeley.
Wrote Landmark Critical Works
Christian was a prolific scholar and writer. The author of several books, she contributed almost 100 articles and reviews to numerous books and journals, and was asked to serve as editor of the contemporary section of the Norton Anthology of African American Literature, edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Nellie Y. McKay.
Her groundbreaking first book, Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, was published in 1980, a time when, as Christian later remarked in Black Feminist Criticism, many writers and scholars were only just "becoming aware of the literary explosion of Afro-American women writers that had occurred during the 1970s." Comprising an historical survey of images of black women in black fiction, and critical evaluations of key contemporary black writers Paule Marshall, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker, Black Women Novelists was the first comprehensive study of black women as literary subjects and creators. Hailed as an important contribution to American literary history, it became an essential text for readers and scholars interested in the new wave of black women writers and helped launch a burgeoning area of academic study.
In 1985 Christian published Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers, a collection of 17 essays written between 1975 and 1984, including studies of the work of Walker, Morrison, Marshall, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Audre Lorde. In her essay on Christian in Feminist Writers, Nancy Raye Tarcher notes the scope of the essays: "Christian examines, from a black feminist perspective, such issues as the importance of motherhood and the mother-child relationship within the works of both African American and Native African writers; nineteenth-century black women novelists' efforts to transcend the prevailing racial and sexual stereotypes of their age; and the attempts by such writers as Paule Marshall to destroy the image of the domineering black matriarch ... in modern African American literature."
Argued Against Theoretical Approaches to Criticism
In the introduction to Black Feminist Criticism, Christian argued against then-current trends in literary criticism, in which the critic uses the text simply as "an occasion for espousing his or her philosophical point of view--revolutionary, black, feminist, or socialist program." As she remarked in her introduction to an essay on Paule Marshall, few black writers had yet been the subject of biographies and literary studies. The black critic's role, she asserted, was to "call attention to the form, show how it comes out of a history, a tradition, how the writer uses it."
In a paper presented at the National Women's Studies Association Conference in 1983, reprinted in Black Feminist Criticism, Christian admitted that her belief in "the need to establish the historical origins and context of a literature" was unfashionable compared with many of the more abstract theoretical trends of the 1980s. But to Christian, emphasis on theory distracted critics and readers of black writing from the more urgent task of discovering and assessing a black literary tradition. This was essential, she believed, so "the cultural reproduction of the powerful" could be challenged.
It was an argument she was to present again in her influential and often reprinted 1987 essay, "Race for Theory: Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the 1990s." Throughout her career, Christian's focus remained on black writers and their work, rather than on political or literary theory. "I know, from literary history," she wrote in "Race for Theory," "that writing disappears unless there is a response to it ... I hope to help ensure that their tradition has continuity and survives."
Received Teaching Honors
Christian was a sought-after speaker at international conferences, a highly respected teacher, and an important mentor to hundreds of students. "One cannot exaggerate the importance of Professor Christian to the Department of African American Studies," wrote Percy Hintzen, Elizabeth Abel, and Suzette Spencer in an obituary on the University of California: In Memoriam Web site. "She became one of its most senior scholars and one of its most important in terms of national and international reputation."
Her contributions to the university were recognized a number of times. In 1986, she became the first African-American woman at Berkeley to be promoted to full professor. In 1991, she was the first African American to win the university's Distinguished Teaching Award. In the statement she wrote for this award, Christian expressed the pride she took in her academic focus. "I love the subject I study," she wrote. "...I find African-American literature to be beautiful, vital."
Aware that much "of African-Americans' literary practice occurs outside of the academy," she placed strong emphasis on communicating knowledge to students they could use within academia and beyond: "I try to share with students what I do outside the classroom: the joys and difficulties of doing research, the papers I write, the institution-building necessary to the preservation and development of this field."
Christian died of lung cancer on June 25, 2000, at her home in Berkeley. Her marriage to poet David Henderson, author of De Mayor of Harlem and biographer of Jimi Hendrix, ended in divorce; she was survived by her only daughter, Najuma.
Remembered as a generous host, avid gardener, and collector of African and Caribbean art, she was still receiving professional accolades in the last year of her life, including Berkeley's highest honor, a citation "for distinguished achievement and for notable service to the university." Henry Louis Gates, Jr., of Harvard University, in a letter supporting her nomination quoted in her New York Times obituary, described Christian as "the senior figure among African-American feminists."
Awards
Selected: Afro-American Society Hall of Fame award, 1980; American Women's Educators Association award, 1982; Before Columbus American Book Award, for Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976, 1983; University of California, Berkeley, Distinguished Teaching Award, 1991; Louise Patterson African-American Studies Award, 1992, 1995; Modern Language Association MELUS award for contribution to ethnic studies and African-American scholarship, 1994; Gwendolyn Brooks Center award, 1995; University of California, Berkeley, Citation for Distinguished Achievement, 2000.
Works
Selected writings
Books
Black Women Novelists: The Development of a Tradition, 1892-1976, Greenwood Press, 1980.
Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers, Pergamon Press, 1985.
From the Inside Out: Afro-American Women's Literary Tradition and the State, Center for Humanistic Studies, University of Minnesota, 1987.
(Editor and author of introduction) Walker, Alice, Everyday Use, Rutgers University Press, 1994.
(Editor, with Elizabeth Abel and Helene Moglen)Female Subjects in Black and White, University of California Press, 1997.
(Contributor) Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Nellie McKay, eds., The Norton Anthology of African American Literature, W. W. Norton & Company, 1997.Periodicals
"Race for Theory: Science, Technology and Socialist Feminism in the 1990s," Cultural Critique Vol. 6, Spring 1987.
Christian is the author of nearly 100 articles and reviews in periodicals.
Further Reading
Books
Christian, Barbara T., Black Feminist Criticism: Perspectives on Black Women Writers, Pergamon Press, 1985, pp. x, 31, 81, 103.
Kester-Shelton, Pamela, Feminist Writers, St. James Press, 1996, pp. 100-101. Periodicals
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, June 30, 2000, sec 1, p. 4.
New York Times, July 9, 2000, Section 1, p. 38. On-line
"Barbara Christian," 2001, University of California: In Memoriam, http://dynaweb.oac.cdlib.org:8088/dynaweb/uchist/public/inmemoriam/inmemoriam2001/%40Generic__BookTextView/484 (February 19, 2004).
"Barbara Christian Bibliography," Black Cultural Studies, www.blackculturalstudies.org/christian/christian_biblio.html (February 17, 2004).
"Barbara T. Christian," Biography Resource Center, www.galenet.com/servlet/BioRC (February 16, 2004).
"Barbara T. Christian," University of California, Berkeley: What Good Teachers Say About Teaching, http://teaching.berkeley.edu/goodteachers/christian.html (February 16, 2004).
"Barbara Theresa Christian: An Obituary," The Diaspora, http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~africam/f00.pdf (February 16, 2004).
"Black History Spotlight: Barbara T. Christian," St. Croix Source, www.onepaper.com/stcroixvi/?v=d&i=&s=News:Local&p=1075612122 (February 18, 2004)
— Paula J. K. Morris

June Jordan

The Jamaican American poet June Jordan (born 1936) explored multicultural and multiracial reality, feminism, and Third World activism in her many poems. She was also politically active in revolutionary movements in the Third World.June Jordan was born in Harlem on July 9, 1936, to Jamaican immigrants, Granville Ivanhoe and Mildred Jordan, who had left rural Jamaica in search of American prosperity. In 1942 the Jordans moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn where Jordan was raised in a home that was optimistic about America and middle-class in its aspirations. Her father was a postal worker, her mother a nurse, and one of her aunts the first African American principal in the New York public school system. The Jordans belonged to the Episcopal Church, and Jordan completed the last three years of high school at Northfield School for Girls, a religious preparatory school in Massachusetts.As a young girl, Jordan's struggle to define herself as a female, African American person, and poet was both hampered and nurtured by the cultural ambivalences of her Jamaican American home. She had often violent disagreements with her parents. Growing up in Brooklyn, she survived physical abuse from her father starting at age 2. Yet she insists he had the greatest influence on her. An African American nationalist, he taught her how to fight using boxing, chairs and knives. "I got away any way I could," Jordan said. "I had the idea that to protect yourself, you try to hurt whatever is out there. I think of myself as my father's daughter." Her mother, who committed suicide when Jordan was an adolescent, never tried to intervene in their fights, she said. "At this point I'm far more forgiving of my father than my mother."Jordan found the all-white environment of Northfield School crippling to her sense of identity and her urge to express her own reality in poetry.Jordan entered Barnard College in 1953 but left New York in 1955 for Chicago after marrying Michael Meyer, a white student at Columbia University. While Meyer pursued a graduate degree at the University of Chicago, Jordan resumed her undergraduate career and struggled to cope with the tensions of an environment hostile to her interracial marriage. Back in New York, a year later, Jordan re-entered Barnard but ultimately chose to sacrifice her college education to raise her son Christopher and to support her husband's pursuit of a graduate degree. She wrote freelance articles under the name June Meyer, wrote speeches for James Farmer of the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), worked in city planning and in social programs for youth, and even served as a film assistant to the noted documentary filmmaker Frederick Wiseman, who was filming The Cool World, a portrait of Harlem.First Book PublicationHer first book-length publication was Who Look At Me (1969), a series of poetic fragments about Black identity in white America interspersed with paintings in the tradition of Langston Hughes' The Sweet Flypaper of Life (1955), whose text alternated with the photographs of Roy de Carava. Jordan's book ends with the lines: "Who see the roof and corners of my pride / to be (as you are) free? / WHO LOOK AT ME?"Jordan published early poems in Negro Digest and Black World, the journals out of which grew the nationalistic Black Aesthetic movement of the 1960s, but she felt the Black Arts movement was "too narrow." Her second volume, Some Changes (1971), includes poems reminiscent of the Black poetry of the 1960s, such as "Okay 'Negroes"' and "What Would I Do White." It also contains intense personal reflections, vivid domestic portraits such as "The Wedding" and "Uncle Bullboy," and historical poems that redefine America through a focus on its multicultural and multiracial reality, such as "47,000 Windows."Subsequent volumes of poetry continued to explore these themes and reflected Jordan's increasing interest in feminism and her radical belief in the need for the Third World to combat Western domination. Her feminism reveals itself strongly in poems such as "Case in Point," which describes being raped, and "1978," a feminist statement of solidarity with all women (Passion, 1980). Jordan supported the Sandinistas of Nicaragua, the Palestinian struggle, and the South African fight against apartheid in both her writing and political activism. Although she called for violence in such poems as "I Must Become a Menace to My Enemies" in Things I Do in the Dark (1981), she also perceived herself as an American poet in the tradition of Walt Whitman, who she felt lost his deserved prominence in the American poetic tradition because of his all-encompassing vision of a multi-cultural, multiracial America and because of his life as an outsider, homosexual, and bohemian.Her Many WorksOther books of poetry include New Day: Poems of Exile and Return (1974), I Love You (1975), The Things I Do in the Dark (1977), Things I Do in the Dark: Selected Poems 1954-1977 (1981), Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980 (1980), Living Room, New Poems: 1980-1984 (1985), and Naming Our Own Destiny: New and Selected Poems (1989). Her strength as an essayist is reflected in Civil Wars, Selected Essays: 1963-1980 (1981), On Call: New Political Essays: 1981-1985 (1986), and Moving Towards Home: Political Essays (1989).Jordan's interest in children is reflected in The Voice of the Children (1970), an edited collection that grew out of a creative workshop for Black and Hispanic children, and poems for young people, such as Dry Victories (1972), Fannie Lou Hamer (1972), New Life: New Room (1975), and Kimako's Story (1981). She wrote a novel for young adults entitled His Own Where, which was nominated for a National Book Award in 1971.Jordan wrote and produced three plays: In the Spirit of Sojourner Truth (1971), For the Arrow that Flies by Day (1981), and Bang Bang Uber Alles, a musical in collaboration with the composer Adrienne Torfin. The last, which targeted racial hate groups, was picketed by the Ku Klux Klan. Jordan wrote the libretto for "I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky" - an unusual song-play about social issues in Los Angeles told in popular song with composer John Adams, and director Peter Sellars.Later WorkShe also brings her analysis to bear on events that have captured the national stage in Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union (1995). "America in Confrontation With Democracy" looks at the reasons behind Jesse Jackson's failed 1988 presidential campaign. Jordan examines the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill hearings in "Can I Get a Witness," where she condemns Hill's enemies. "To be a Black woman in this savage country: Is that to be nothing and no one revered and defended and given our help and our gratitude?" she writes. Other topics Jordan explored in "Technical Difficulties" included the legacy of Martin Luther King Jr.; the poverty of American education; the fall of Mike Tyson; and the Rodney King verdict and the Los Angeles riots.In addition to her essay collection, Jordan released a book of poems. The book is a serious, intense, poetry collection. Jordan rewrites and stretches the definition of love. She is not subtle or afraid of the full range of passion that these four letters encompass. She writes as a confident woman, a poet for whom words are precious tears caught in one's palm. Through her provocative and vivid imagery, she invites the reader to celebrate everyday pleasures that are transformed into extraordinary feelings as a result of being in love.Touchstone (1995) is a collection of essays and previously unpublished musings, first issued in 1980. The final essay was written when Jimmy Carter worked in the Oval Office. Yet the writing remains amazingly fresh, a testimony to the strength of Jordan's convictions, and the intractability of segregation and ignorance in this country. Whether she's writing letters, magazine articles or speeches, Jordan pours herself into the issue at hand, which could be police brutality, neglect of New York City schoolchildren or Zora Neale Hurston's overlooked status as a writer. Jordan's think pieces contain a vision of current events wide enough to contain history, and that gives them shelf life long after their use-by dates.Overall, Jordan is probably best known for her strident poems decrying the unjust murder of black youths by police throughout New York. Underlying the angry tone of those poems about police brutality, is the love Jordan feels for her people. Jordan has never shown that she fears undressing in public. Evidenced in her poignant, poetic essay, "Many Rivers to Cross," Jordan traces her remarkable journey from being a recently divorced single parent, confronted by unemployment and her mother's suicide, to a woman who relinquishes weakness. In other essays and poems about being raped, June Jordan repeatedly shares deeply personal pains; she renders herself vulnerable so that others may garner strength and stand bravely assured, determined to survive the storm.Jordan was awarded a Prix de Rome in environmental design to write and live in Rome, in 1970 after being nominated by R. Buckminster Fuller. Jordan taught at City College in New York, Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College, Yale University, and State University of New York, and Stony Brook, Long Island, where she taught for many years. She was a professor of African American studies at the University of California (Berkeley) in 1997.Further ReadingFor more biographical information, see Jordan's Civil Wars (1981); Alexis Deveaux, "Creating Soul Food," in Essence (April 1981); and The Dictionary of Literary Biography: Afro-American Dramatists and Prose Writers after 1955 (volume 38); further critical analysis can be found in Peter Erickson, "June Jordan," in Black Sister II: Poetry by Black American Women, 1746-1980 (1981), edited by Erlene Stetson; and Erickson, "The Love Poetry of June Jordan" in Callaloo (Winter 1986). Black Biography: June JordanTop Home > Library > History, Politics & Society > Black Biographiespoet; novelist; essayist; educator; activistPersonal InformationBorn on July 9, 1936, in New York, NY; died June 14, 2002, in Berkeley, CA; daughter of Granville Ivanhoe (a postal clerk) and Mildred Maude (a nurse; maiden name, Fisher) Jordan; married Michael Meyer, 1955 (divorced, 1965); children: Christopher DavidEducation: Attended Barnard College and University of Chicago.Memberships: Board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, 1984-02, New York Foundation for the Arts, and PEN American Center.CareerPoet, prose writer, educator, activist. Assisted producer for film The Cool World, 1963-64; City College of the City University of New York, instructor, 1966-68, assistant professor of English, 1975-76; Yale University, visiting lecturer in English and Afro-American studies, 1974-75; taught English and directed Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK Program) at Connecticut College, New London, 1967-69; taught literature at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, 1969-74; State University of New York at Stony Brook, assistant professor, 1978- 82, professor of English, 1982-89, director of poetry center and creative writing program, 1986-89; professor of Afro-American Studies and Women's Studies at University of California at Berkeley, 1989-02.Life's Work"I write for as many different people as I can, acknowledging that in any problem situation you have at least two viewpoints to be reached," June Jordan said in a Publishers Weekly interview. "I'm also interested in telling the truth as I know it." By the mid-1990s Jordan had become one of the country's most prominent contemporary black women writers. A nationally renowned lecturer and activist, she produced an extensive and varied body of work, through which she strongly affirmed herself, her rights as a woman, her thoughts on black consciousness, and her ties to the African-American community. Though she was best known for her intimate, powerfully direct poetry, Jordan also wrote award-winning children's fiction, highly charged nonfiction pieces, plays, and songs.Jordan's poetry and other works reflect her belief in addressing the concerns of audiences of color, exploring black life, creating better living conditions for black families, and enhancing black culture. While self-realization is crucial, Jordan also believed in shared human goals for a better society; her poetry enabled her to express her political ideas while making art. She was frequently compared with politically conscious black poets such as Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka, but her verse bore traces of other influences, including those of white American poet Walt Whitman, whose self-celebratory poems she admired.Jordan's varied works include her debut book of poems, titled Who Look at Me; her first young adult novel, His Own Where, which was nominated for the National Book Award and written entirely in black English; a biography written for young readers about Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who struggled for black voting rights; the classic verse collection Things That I Do in the Dark; the essay collection Civil Wars, about violence in America from the 1960s to the 1980s; Naming Our Destiny, a 30-year compilation of poetry; and the 1992 book of essays, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union.In all, Jordan published twenty-seven books. One of her last books, Soldier: A Poet's Childhood, published in 2000 is an autobiography and discusses her early childhood with an almost indifferent mother and sometimes brutally abusive father in some detail. In an Essence magazine interview with Alexis DeVeaux, Jordan summed up her relationship with the two of them. "My mother was shadowy. I would be very hard-put to tell you what about me, about the way I am or think, comes from my mother. My father was very intense, passionate and over- the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant." She also told DeVeaux that the message that she hoped to send to young black girls who read Soldier is that the girl can survive and become the woman--that she need not assume a victim mentality that she can take control and overcome adversity.Born in Harlem on July 9, 1936, Jordan was the only child of hardworking immigrant parents who moved to New York City from the island of Jamaica. Her father, Granville Ivanhoe Jordan, held a night position at the U.S. Postal Service, while her mother, Mildred, worked as a nurse. Jordan spent her first five years in Harlem before the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. It was there that she wrote her first poems at the age of seven. Her concern with her family and locale stayed with her into adulthood and prompted her to write in her essay collection Civil Wars: "You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola ... [and that] leads you back to your own bed."Jordan's childhood was a painful one. She grew up in a home where her father beat her out of his own sense of oppression while her mother stood passively by. These early experiences contributed to her passionate search for self-realization--a search that was delayed by her parents' decision to send her for three years to an all-white New England preparatory school, the Northfield School for Girls in Massachusetts. In her English classes there, she studied almost exclusively the work of white male poets, which she later acknowledged had a stifling effect on her growth as an African-American artist.After graduating from prep school, Jordan entered Barnard College in the fall of 1953. There she met Michael Meyer, a Columbia University student, whom she married in 1955. Because Meyer was white, the couple experienced the anguish of intense racial prejudice--during the pre-civil rights era in the United States, interracial marriages were against the law in many states. Jordan interrupted her schooling at Barnard in 1955 for a year of studies at the University of Chicago, where her husband was getting his graduate degree in anthropology; she returned to Barnard the next year.Two years later, their son, Christopher David Meyer, was born. But Jordan's relationship with her husband was deteriorating. Increasingly she was raising and supporting her son alone and developing her own varied interests in poetry, journalism, the civil rights movement, and the Harlem community. She assisted a documentary filmmaker in producing a film about Harlem's street kids called The Cool World. She also worked on a proposal with architect Buckminster Fuller to build low-cost, aesthetic housing in the Harlem community. Her work of the period was extensively influenced by her surroundings, by the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and by the factors that lead to the Harlem riots of 1964, which she observed and wrote about.After she and her husband divorced in 1965, Jordan supported herself and her son alone and took various teaching positions. She taught English and literature at the City College of the City University of New York, Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. By 1982 she had been named a full professor at SUNY Stony Brook, and four years later she was directing the school's poetry center and creative writing program. She began teaching Afro-American and women's studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1989.After the publication of her first book of poetry, Who Look at Me, in 1969, Jordan wrote a series of powerful works that chronicled her life's struggle and reflected her growing maturity. The title poem in this first book best shows her movement away from victimization and toward resistance; in it she wrote about the way she thought many white people of that era viewed people of color: "A white stare splits obliterates/the nerve-wrung wrist from work/the breaking ankle or/the turning glory/of a spine.... Although the world/forgets me/I will say yes/AND NO.... I am black, alive and looking back at you."By the time her major collection of poetry, Things That I Do in the Dark, edited by novelist Toni Morrison, was published in 1977, Jordan viewed herself thus: "I am a stranger/learning to worship the strangers on earth/around me/whoever you are/whoever I may become." In her heavily autobiographical essay book Civil Wars, published four years later, Jordan describes an American landscape torn apart by racial tension and violence. Black writer Toni Cade Bambara summarized the book and put it in historical context in Ms. magazine: "[Civil Wars is a] chilling but profoundly hopeful vision of living in the USA. Jordan's vibrant spirit manifests itself throughout this collection of articles, letters, journal entries, and essays. What is fundamental to that spirit is caring, commitment, a deep-rooted belief in the sanctity of life.... Civil Wars is an 'autobiography' very much in the vein of Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, by W. E. B. Du Bois, the distinguished black scholar and activist of an earlier generation."Jordan's works reveal an unwavering concern for basic human rights and equity for all people. In her "Poem About My Rights," which appeared in her famous collection about violence in society titled Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, she expresses rage and frustration at racial and sexual discrimination: "We are the wrong people of /the wrong skin on the wrong continent.... It was my father saying I was wrong saying that/I should have been a boy because he wanted one.... I am the history of the rejection of who I am." But she also affirms herself and vows to defend herself if necessary: "I am not wrong: Wrong is not my name/My name is my own my own my own/and I can't tell you who the hell set things up like this/but I can tell you that from now on my resistance/my simple and daily and nightly self-determination/may very well cost you your life."Critics have underscored Jordan's simultaneously personal and universal appeal, as well as her use of Black English and irony. She is "a poet for many people, speaking in a voice they cannot fail to understand about things they will want to know," commented Susan Mernit in Library Journal. "[Passion] elucidates those moments when personal life and political struggle, two discrete elements, suddenly entwine." Commenting on the power and skill of Jordan's writings, Ms. magazine contributor Joan Larkin wrote, "June Jordan's language is a high energy blend of street and literary idiom.... Irony is basic to Jordan's perception of a violent, antiblack, antifemale culture." Other reviewers acknowledged her adherence to a black oral tradition. In a lengthy essay in African American Review, Scott MacPhail discusses Jordan's role as a black intellectual. About Jordan he says, "June Jordan's career thus inspires a broadening of our expectations for what an African-American intellectual can and should do, and how she can do it."Because of her personal experiences, Jordan often expressed identification with other nonwhite peoples around the globe who seek self-determination. Her books On Call and Living Room, collections of essays and poetry respectively, reflect her identification with the Palestinian people. In the 1980s her scathing poetic and prose criticism of Israeli policy concerning Lebanon and the Palestinians generated considerable controversy.And, at other times on other topics, Jordan has drawn fire from critics for being one-sided and rhetorical. In 1989 when Naming Our Destiny--her compilation of poetry spanning three decades--was published along with previously uncollected verse, Publishers Weekly commented: "[Jordan] attempts to shoulder too many causes here, at times losing herself in rhetoric and politics that could benefit from a fuller discussion. However, in her best work, Jordan takes an infectious delight in language, playing with words to transform experience. She makes artful use of rhyme, and draws from slave ballads and blues music to protest the everyday human tribulations that otherwise might go unnoticed.... We witness the author progressing from a youthful struggle with identity to a mature feminist assertion of the rights of all people."In her 1992 collection of essays, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Jordan discusses her immigrant Brooklyn family's quest for the American dream; she also deals with enduring stereotypes about race and class, as well as myths surrounding African-American historical figures from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Anita Hill. Commented Adele Logan Alexander in the Women's Review of Books, "June Jordan has a prolific intellect and a vast reservoir of extraordinary and broad-based knowledge, yet her writing maintains its solid grounding in everyday experience." Though Jordan's voice often made those who support the status quo uncomfortable, her clear aim was to raise questions about the way we live and to provide people with visions of future alternatives.In her written work and her activities, Jordan worked throughout her life to make sure that the black community remembered to value the black experience and black culture. She campaigned for the recognition of Black English and wrote several poems, essays, and a full-length book, His Own Where, in Black English. Two of her essays, "Nobody Mean More to Me Than You" and "White English/Black English: The Politics of Translation" explain why she felt Black English is important and why it should be studied as a dialect. In her later years, Jordan often took up the cause of black figures that she felt needed it. In one if her essays she speaks out against the black leadership in America for their failure to back Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In another she wrote a "Requiem for the Champ," speaking about the forces that formed Mike Tyson and caused him to react with such violence. She explains that in determining responsibility for this type of violence, we must look to the community and economic structure that formed the man--she says "There must be some way for our culture to reward a black man for something other than violence; there must be something else for a black man from the ghetto to do or be."In 1995, in a rather interesting side track to her career, Jordan collaborated with composer John Adams and director Peter Sellers in a romantic musical that explored life in late 20th century Los Angeles. The result was a short-lived production called I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I saw the Sky. In a review for Insight on the News, Gale Hanson writes "... But the best anyone could wish for this ill-conceived and badly executed effort is that the stage floor would open and swallow the production whole."Much of Jordan's written work is drawn from her own life and experiences. Perhaps the clearest indication of her character can be found in her introduction to Civil Wars. Here she talks about how her uncle helped her learn to stand up to the bullies in this world--"It's a bully. Probably you can't win.... But if you go in there, saying to yourself, 'I may not win this one but it's going to cost you' ... they'll leave you alone." It is apparent that she lived her life with this philosophy. " ... nobody fought me twice," she continues in the introduction. "They said I was 'crazy'." She spent her life working for the improvement of conditions in the black community and in many other areas where she thought there were inequalities and injustice.In early 2002 Jordan received the 2001 Writers for Writers Award from Barnes & Noble. She was honored as a writer who had given generously to other writers and helped broaden the literary community. In particular, she was praised for her work in establishing the organization Poetry for the People. This organization offers free poetry workshops in high schools, community centers, churches and prisons in underprivileged communities.Jordan died on June 14, 2002 in San Francisco at the age of 65. She had breast cancer. She leaves a legacy of her writings for future generations to read and emulate.AwardsRockefeller grant for creative writing, 1969-70; Nancy Bloch Award, 1971, for The Voice of the Children; chosen one of the year's best young adult novelists, New York Times, 1971; National Book Award nomination, 1971, for His Own Where; Yaddo fellow, 1979-80; National Endowment for the Arts fellow in poetry, 1982; award for international reporting from National Association of Black Journalists, 1984; New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry, 1985; Writers for Writers Award from Barnes & Noble. 2001.WorksSelected writings Poetry Who Look at Me, Crowell, 1969. Some Changes, Dutton, 1971. New Days: Poems of Exile and Return, Emerson Hall, 1974. Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry, edited by Toni Morrison, Random House, 1977. Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, Beacon Press, 1980. Living Room: New Poems, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1985. Lyrical Campaigns: Selected Poems, Virago Press, 1989. Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems, Thunder's Mouth Press, 1989. Essays Civil Wars, Beacon Press, 1981. On Call: Political Essays, South End Press, 1985. Moving Towards Home: Political Essays, Virago Press, 1989. Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Pantheon, 1992. For young readers His Own Where, Crowell, 1971. Dry Victories, Holt, 1972. Fannie Lou Hamer, Crowell, 1972. New Room: New Life, Crowell, 1975. Kimako's Story, Houghton, 1981. Plays In the Spirit of Sojourner Truth, produced in New York City at the Public Theatre, May 1979. For the Arrow That Flies by Day, (staged reading), produced in New York City at the Shakespeare Festival, April 1981. Poetry for the People: A Revolutionary Blueprint, 1995. Kissing God Goodbye: Poems 1991-1997, 1997. Soldier, A Poet's Childhood, 2000. Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays, 2002.Further ReadingBooks Authors of Books for Young People, Scarecrow Press, 1990, p. 377. Black Writers, 2nd edition, Gale, 1994. Contemporary Literary Criticism, Gale, Volume 5, 1976; Volume 11, 1979; Volume 23, 1983. Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 38: Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, Gale, 1985. Jordan, June, Who Look at Me, Crowell, 1969. Jordan, June, Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry, edited by Toni Morrison, Random House, 1977. Jordan, June, Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, Beacon Press, 1980. Jordan, June, Civil Wars, Beacon Press, 1981. Jordan, June, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Pantheon Books, 1992. Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, 1988, p. 1467. Periodicals African American Review, Fall 1998, p. 504; Spring 1999, p. 57. Essence, October 1992; September 2000, p. 102. Insight on the News, June 12, 1995, p. 33. Lambda Book Report, April 2002, p.32. Library Journal, November 1, 1989, p. 92. Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1992, p. E-1. Ms. , April 1975; April 1981; July/August 1990, p. 71. Nation, January 29, 1990, p. 135. New Statesman, June 5, 1987, p. 38; January 6, 1989, p. 31. Ou t magazine, December 1992/January 1993. Progressive, October 1989, p. 12; February 1991, p. 18; July 1991, p. 12; November 1991, p. 11; January 1992, p. 11; February 1992, p. 18; March 1992, p. 13; June 1992, p. 12. Publishers Weekly, May 1, 1981, pp. 12-13; October 27, 1989, p. 62; August 17, 1992; May 8, 2000 p. 218; July 8, 2002, p. 42. Village Voice, July 20, 1982; August 17, 1982. Women's Review of Books, April 1993, p. 6. — Alison Carb Sussman and Pat Donaldson Works: Works by June JordanTop Home > Library > Literature & Language > Works by Authors(1936-2002) 1994Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union. A self-confessed radical and part of the cultural left, the Harlem-born poet, novelist, and essayist sets out a program for state-supported family life and employment and attacks the record of the Reagan-Bush years. While critics take issue with her politics, they find her personal essays, reminiscences, and vivid re-creation of neighborhood life in Brooklyn compelling and supportive of her political opinions.1997Kissing God Goodbye: New Poems, 1991-1997. Jordan's final collection intersperses love lyrics with poems on Bosnia, Africa, urban America, and the poet's battle with breast cancer.