June Jordan quotes

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect. (June Jordan)
In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way. View quote
June Jordan
Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am? View quote
June Jordan
That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes. View quote
June Jordan
We are the ones we have been waiting for. View quote
June Jordan
In America, the traditional routes to black identity have hardly been normal. Suicide (disappearance by imitation, or willed extinction), violence (hysterical religiosity, crime, armed revolt), and exemplary moral courage; none of these is normal. View quote
June Jordan
Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law. View quote
June Jordan
To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way. View quote
June Jordan
Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth. View quote
June Jordan
I am working for the courage to admit the truth that Bertolt Brecht has written; he says, "It takes courage to say that the good were defeated not because they were good, but because they were weak." I cherish the mercy and the grace of women's work. But I know there is new work that we must undertake as well: that new work will make defeat detestable to us. That new women's work will mean we will not die trying to stand up: we will live that way: standing up. I came too late to help my mother to her feet. By way of everlasting thanks to all of the women who have helped me to stay alive I am working never to be late again. View quote
June Jordan
As a child I was taught that to tell the truth was often painful. As an adult I have learned that not to tell the truth is more painful, and that the fear of telling the truth - whatever the truth may be - that fear is the most painful sensation of a moral life. (June Jordan)
Education has paralleled the life of prospering white America: it has been characterized by reverence for efficiency, cultivation of competence unattended by concern for aim, big white lies, and the mainly successful blackout of Black life. View quote
June Jordan
Efficiency, competence: Black students know the deadly, neutral definition of these words. There seldom has been a more efficient system for profiteering, through human debasement, than the plantations, of a while ago. Today, the whole world sits, as quietly scared as it can sit, afraid that, tomorrow, America may direct its efficiency and competence toward another forest for defoliation, or clean-cut laser-beam extermination. View quote
June Jordan
Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important. View quote
June Jordan
The first function of poetry is to tell the truth, to learn how to do that, to find out what you really feel and what you really think. View quote
June Jordan
It means to educate myself incessantly about the world around me. View quote
June Jordan
The music of language became extremely important to me, and obvious to me. By the time I was seven I was writing myself. I was a poet. View quote
June Jordan
But, based on my friendship with Evie as young mothers, I started going on freedom rides in 1966. View quote
June Jordan
I wrote those poems for myself, as a way of being a soldier here in this country. I didn't know the poems would travel. I didn't go to Lebanon until two years ago, but people told me that many Arabs had memorized these poems and translated them into Arabic. View quote
June Jordan
One of the reasons I came to Berkeley was because I saw so many students of all different colors speaking so many different languages and ferociously presenting all these different views. I thought, this is the 21st century and I want to be here! View quote
June Jordan
I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest. (June Jordan)
There are two ways to worry words. One is hoping for the greatest possible beauty in what is created. The other is to tell the truth. View quote
June Jordan
So, poetry becomes a means for useful dialogue between people who are not only unknown, but mute to each other. It produces a dialogue among people that guards all of us against manipulation by our so-called leaders. View quote
June Jordan
The courts cannot garnish a father's salary, nor freeze his account, nor seize his property on behalf of his children, in our society. Apparently this is because a kid is not a car or a couch or a boat. View quote
June Jordan
My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant. View quote
June Jordan