Lexington Books
Pages: 294
•
Trim: 6 x 9
978-0-7391-1280-9 • Paperback • August 2005 • $54.99 • (£42.00)
Margret Grebowicz is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Houston, Downtown. Valerie Kinloch is Assistant Professor of English Education at Teachers College, Columbia University.
1 Introduction: "Olive and Us: Notes for an Empire of Barbarians"
2 Part I: Individual and National Identity in a (Not So) Democratic State
3 Poem: "Case in Point" by June Jordan
4 "This is the only time to come together": June Jordan's Publics and the Possibility of Democracy
5 Exposing the Lie of Neutrality: June Jordan's Affirmative Acts
6 Narrating Nation: Exploring the Space of Americaness and the Place of African American Women through the Works of June Jordan
7 Part II: Who Says It's Not a Language? Black English in Theory and Practice
8 Poem: "What Would I Do White?" by June Jordan
9 Black English as a Linguistic System: A Statement about Our Rights
10 Telling Her Own Truth: June Jordan, Standard English, and the Epistemology of Ignorance
11 Notes Toward a Multicultural Writing Center: The Problems of Language in a Democratic State
12 Section III. Radicalizing Children's Lives and Literatures
13 Poem: "One Minus One Minus One" by June Jordan
14 "Affirmative Acts": Language, Childhood, and Power in June Jordan's Cross-Writing
15 Taking Children Seriously: June Jordan's Contribution to African American Children's Literature
16 Beyond "Orientation": On Sex, Poetry, and the Violability of Children
17 Section IV. The Art of Resistance, or Poetics Politicized
18 Poem: "Calling on All Silent Minorities" by June Jordan
19 Performing "Righteous Certainty": The Shifting Poetic Address of June Jordan's War Resistance Poetry
20 June Jordan's Radical Pedagogy: Activist Poetry in Public Education
21 Finding a Democratic Speech: The Intercultural Poetics and Pedagogy of June Jordan's Poetry for the People
22 Section V: Writers Reflect
23 Poem: "War and Memory" by June Jordan
24 Writing War, Writing Memory
25 Words & Roses
26 June, with love
27 A Colored Democracy: "Cultural Exchange" Revisited
28 Directed by Desire
Despite her tragic premature death, June Jordan remains an essential American writer, ludic and transgressive, whose work rescues the idea and ideals of American culture from their current debasement in government. Her poems and essays continue to spark delight, rage, and an energy which . . . is in itself an act of resistance. This thoughtful critical collection on Jordan's poetry and prose . . . will enable a new generation of readers to take June Jordan's writing as example, inspiration, and permission, and will incite the both the activists and the scholars among them to keep it firmly in view.
— Marilyn Hacker