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Remembering June Jordan
"Her writing showed me that it was okay to be angry."
By Belia Mayeno-Choy
 Before
June Jordan, my experience of poetry was limited to writing sappy
poems lamenting 9th grade ex-boyfriends and analyzing the occasional
stanza for my English class. But enrolling in her "Poetry 4
the People" program changed the way I understood the power
and scope of poetry. Sometimes the student teachers would pass out
random photos cut out from magazines to use as topics from our poems.
I had a picture of a chubby black toddler sitting on a dry lawn
in front of a sagging old house. Suddenly I understood that I was
free to write about what I saw in any words I wanted, beyond slang-peppered
conversations or rigid term paper English. I could say the baby
had fingertips like a salamander, or that the broken windows of
the house looked like the toothless gums of an old man. I could
build anything I wanted with words.
We also read many of June Jordan's own poems. I was fascinated,
because her writing showed me that it was okay to be angry. She
encouraged rebellion against the social structures that told me
my gender, my heritage and my class made me inferior. She still
wrote very soulful poems about love and romance and intimacy, but
more important to me, she eloquently expressed the struggle of being
a woman of color. Jordan's "Poem About my Rights" hangs
on the wall above my bed — the whole poem is articulate, and
angry, and beautiful in a disturbing way. But it's the last lines
that echo in my head, whenever I'm feeling weak, or hurt, or stepped
on.
"… 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"
I don't take her words literally — of course I don't plan
to kill someone I think is being oppressive. But I love the idea
that my empowerment can change someone else's way of life, by simply
writing about my own reality. Through June Jordan's poems, I learned
that I am allowed to feel however I want about the world around
me. I can detest it, be in love with it, or be unsure of my place
in it. But whatever I feel, my experience is just as valid as everyone
else's. I have a right to step forward and speak my truth, which
is what I do, each and every time I put my pen to paper and write
a poem.
— Belia Mayeno-Choy is an assistant producer at Youth Radio.
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