This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy

A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan’s multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.


This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.


Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, and many other people touched by Jordan’s work.

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This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy

A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan’s multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.


This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.


Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, and many other people touched by Jordan’s work.

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This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy

This Unruly Witness: June Jordan's Legacy

Overview

A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan’s multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.


This Unruly Witness was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.


Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, and many other people touched by Jordan’s work.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9798888905296
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Publication date: 11/11/2025
Sold by: Barnes & Noble
Format: eBook
Pages: 312
File size: 5 MB

About the Author

Becky Thompson is a scholar, poet, activist, and author of poetry collections To Speak in Salt and Zero Is the Whole I Fall into at Night.

Lauren Muller (1959–2023) was chosen by June Jordan to edit the collectively-inspired June Jordan's Poetry for the People. Muller, the Chair of Interdisciplinary Studies at City College of San Francisco, also coedited Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women.

Dominique C. Hill, an assistant professor of women’s studies at Colgate University, is a qualitative researcher and body archivist studying Black girlhood and Black queer resistance.

Durell M. Callier is an artist-scholar who documents the lived experiences of Black youth and their communities, examining how Black art and creative practices subvert and reimagine Black life in the face of violence.

alexis pauline gumbs created the June Jordan Saturday Survival School and the Juneteenth Freedom Academy in Durham, North Carolina, where she co-creates a living library of Black LGBTQ Feminist Brilliance called the Mobile Homecoming Trust with her partner Sangodare. gumbs won the Whiting Award in Nonfiction for Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals (AK Press, 2020), and is a National Humanities Center Fellow, a National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellow, and author of Survival Is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2024)

Table of Contents

Foreword: A Definition of Love by Alexis Pauline Gumbs


PART ONE: POET ON THE WORLD STAGE

In Response to “The Bombing of Baghdad” by June Jordan, Naomi Shihab Nye

Black Alive and Looking Straight at You: The Legacy of June Jordan, Elizabeth Alexander

It Began as a Romance: The Collaboration of June Jordan and Adrienne B. Torf, Adrienne B. Torf

Archive of a Bruise, Arc of the Blues, Alexis De Veaux

June Jordan and the Renaissance of Poetry as a Performing Art, Zack Rogow

Urban Ghazal, Zack Rogow

“A Report from the Bahamas”: And What of Identity Politics? Margo Okazawa-Rey

Elegy for a Soldier, Marilyn Hacker

Letter to My Friend, for June Jordan, Kathy Engel

Puño en Alto! Libro Abierto! / Fists, Up! Books, Open!: On Anti-Intellectualism, Literacy Brigades, and Revolutionary Consciousness, Maria Poblet

The Set Up, Mahogany L. Browne

The Waters Are Wide: We Can Cross Over, Becky Thompson

Call and Response, Gwendolen Hardwick


PART TWO: WE ARE LUCKY SHE DARED

Some of Us Did Not Die, Remembering June Jordan, E. Ethelbert Miller

Bit by Bit, Dima Hilal

Elphinstone, Bombay 1993

“The Bombing of Baghdad”: Building Connections in a Time of War, Shanti Bright Brien

Maestra, Xochiquetzal Candelaria

Dear June, Ruth Forman

not past, Ariel Luckey

A Blueprint for June’s Love, Sheila Menenzes

Choosing a Praxis of Liberation, Kate Holbrook

On the Spirit of June Jordan: The Ultimate Capacities of a School’s Lifeforce, Jessica Wei Huang

Stay All the Way with Reggie and Ranya, Reid Gómez

I choose/anything/anyone/I may lose: June Jordan, Faith, and Holy Risk, Dani Gabriel

Between the Knuckles of My Own Two Hands: Learning from June Jordan, Sriram Shamasunder


PART THREE: THE AWESOME, DIFFICULT WORK OF LOVE

A Place of Rage: A Conversation, Angela Y. Davis, Pratibha Parmar, and Leigh Raiford

So Long Our Sisters Love Us Strongly, Rachel Eliza Griffiths

In Response to “Apologies to All the People in Lebanon,” adrienne maree brown

After June Jordan, A Poem About Police Violence, Jehan Bseiso

For the Sake of a People’s Poetry: June Jordan and Walt Whitman, Donna Masini

Truth-Telling as an Emancipatory Act: What June Jordan Taught Me About Liberation, Elizabeth Riva Meyer

Finding “Living Room” with My Drone, Zeina Azzam

Love Like a Mango, Obvious, Will Horter

June Jordan: When All Things Are Dear Disappear, Wesley Brown

Something Like a Sonnet: Reading June Jordan, Finding My Voice, and Becoming an Oral Historian, Kelly Elaine Navies

Choosing My Mind Between the Mosquitos and the Moon, Ruth Nicole Brown

A Note on Praxis and Black Girls, Dominique C. Hill

Become a Menace, Afaa M. Weaver 尉雅風


Afterword by Imani Perry

Acknowledgements

Notes

Bibliography

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