Some of Us Did Not Die

"She remains a thinker and activist who'insists upon complexity.' "Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle * Some of Us Did Not Die brings together a rich sampling of the late poet June Jordan's prose writings. The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.

"A powerful voice...Jordan's life and work is about quintessential American ideals of justice and resistance to tyranny. When rendered from a female African-American point of view that champions the disenfranchised, those ideals take on a special cast...Even in death, she has a voice that is committed and unafraid."--Atlanta Journal Constitution
"A provocative and personal collection of essays from "one of America's fiercest literary figures and social activists...the hope of a generation."--Ms. Magazine
"Astonishingly powerful."--Matthew Rothschild, The Progressive
"Insightful...provocative."--New York Times
"Jordan makes us think of Akhmatova, of Neruda. She is among the bravest of us, the most outraged. She feels for all. She is the universal poet."--Alice Walker
"These selections offer real riches from Jordan's mind and heart, essays that weigh and assess and which, even after her death, express her resilient credo, 'Not yet/big bird of prey/not yet.'"--Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle
"Whatever her theme or mode, June Jordan continually delineates the conditions of survival--of the body, and mind, and the heart."--Adrienne Rich
"Writer, activist, and professor June Jordan's final essay collection serves as a barometer for the last four decades of radical humanitarian thought. Jordan's days were spent in constant revelation. Read her words, risk your own unveiling."--David Mills, The Village Voice

June Jordan was Professor of African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley and was born in New York City in 1936. Her books of poetry include Haruko / Love Poems and Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems. She was also the author of five children's books, a novel, three plays, and five volumes of political essays, the most recent of which was Affirmative Acts. For more than ten years, she wrote a regular political column for The Progressive magazine. Her honours included a National Book Award nomination, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. June Jordan died in Berkeley, California on June 14, 2002.

"She remains a thinker and activist who'insists upon complexity.' "Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle * Some of Us Did Not Die brings together a rich sampling of the late poet June Jordan's prose writings. The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.

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