Böcker av June Jordan

Searingly beautiful poems about compassion, resistance and desire by an iconic Black American activist and writer

Black poets from the early twentieth century and onward come together for a moving anthology, edited and organized by the late, revered poet June Jordan. First published in 1970, soulscript is a poignant, panoramic collection of poetry from some of the most eloquent voices in the art. Selected for their literary excellence and by the dictates of Jordan's heart, these works tell the story of both collective and personal experiences, in Jordan's words, "in tears, in rage, in hope, in sonnet, in blank/free verse, in overwhelming rhetorical scream.” Soulscript features works by Jordan and other luminaries like Gwendolyn Brooks, Countee Cullen, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Nikki Giovanni, Langston Hughes, Gayl Jines, James Weldon Johnson, Audre Lorde, Claude McKay, Ishmael Reed, Sonia Sanchez, and Richard Wright, as well as the fresh voices of a turbulent era's younger writers. Celebrated spoken-word poet Staceyann Chin, an original cast member of Def Poetry Jam on Broadway, has also added an introduction that speaks to Jordan's legacy, helping to further cement soulscript as a visionary compilation that has already become a modern classic.

After decades out of print, Passion-one of June Jordan's most important collections-has returned to readers. Originally entitled, passion: new poems, 1977-1980, this volume holds key works including "Poem About My Rights," "Poem About Police Violence," "Free Flight," and an essay by the poet, "For the Sake of the People's Poetry: Walt Whitman and the Rest of Us." June Jordan was a fierce advocate for the safety and humanity of women and Black people, and for the freedom of all people-and Barack Obama made a line from this book famous: "We are the ones we have been waiting for." With love and humor, via lyrics and rants, she calls for nothing less than radical compassion. This new edition includes a foreword by Nicole Sealey.

';Directed by Desire . . . is a powerful addition to the entire canon of American poetry.'BooklistNow in paperback, Directed by Desire is the definitive overview of June Jordan's -poetry. Collecting the finest work from Jordan's ten volumes, as well as dozens of ';last poems' that were never published in Jordan's lifetime, these more than six hundred pages overflow with intimate lyricism, elegance, fury, meditative solos, and dazzling vernacular riffs.As Adrienne Rich writes in her introduction, June Jordan ';wanted her readers, listeners, students, to feel their own latent powerof the word, the deed, of their own beauty and intrinsic value.' From ';These Poems': These poems they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready?The cloth edition of Directed by Desire was selected as a Library Journal Poetry Book of the Year and received the Lambda Book Award for Lesbian Poetry. June Jordan taught at UC Berkeley for many years and founded Poetry for the People. Her twenty-eight books include poetry, essays, fiction, and children's books. She was a regular columnist for The Progressive and a prolific writer whose articles appeared in The Village Voice, The New York Times, Ms. Magazine, and The Nation. After her death in 2002, a school in the San Francisco School District was renamed in her honor.

A posthumous collection of the essays of June Jordan, noted for its "love of language" and "expression of social identity" (Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle)

Written with exceptional beauty throughout, Soldier stands and delivers an eloquent, heart-breaking, hilarious and hopeful, witness to the beginnings of a truly extraordinary, American life.

The only young adult book by June Jordan is rediscovered and introduced by best-selling author Sapphire.