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iammandyellen's review
5.0
June Jordan's essays are as powerful as her poetry. The same outrage and sorrow that impassioned her verse electrified her responses to political and cultural events during the 90's. Her honesty and candor in naming injustice and asking demanding and difficult questions is paralleled only by her seemingly boundless optimism.
Notes:
"I do not believe that we can restore and expand the freedoms that our lives require unless and until we embrace the justice of our rage." (19, "Where is the Rage?" The Progressive, Oct 1989)
"As you descend deeper and deeper into media hysteria about alleged or impending 'violations of the canon' and 'rape of the foundations of Western civilization,' the smell of brain rot and unmitigated white supremacist ideology becomes unmistakable." (76, "Toward a Manifest New Destiny", The Progressive, Feb 1992)
("I am Seeking an Attitude", The Progressive, May 1993)
"—hesitation and restraint make tenderness and generosity and altruistic interaction possible and even likely./ Hesitation and restraint quiver quietly alive someplace opposite to violence and domination. And I wonder about that apparently unequal equation./ Is that the problem worldwide?/ Is the female of the species some kind of noble/virtuous set-up for her male counterpart?" (145, "We Are All Refugees", The Progresive, Jul 1994)
"And maybe the unity of resistance to hatred that will stop that hatred seems improbable. […] But, meanwhile, I am moving on an irrepressible wish that all of us will: all of us will build that circle of our common safety that all of us deserve./ I'm saying, 'Are you hunting for Jews? You're looking for me!'" (220, "The Hunters and the Hunted", Oct 1999)
Notes:
"I do not believe that we can restore and expand the freedoms that our lives require unless and until we embrace the justice of our rage." (19, "Where is the Rage?" The Progressive, Oct 1989)
"As you descend deeper and deeper into media hysteria about alleged or impending 'violations of the canon' and 'rape of the foundations of Western civilization,' the smell of brain rot and unmitigated white supremacist ideology becomes unmistakable." (76, "Toward a Manifest New Destiny", The Progressive, Feb 1992)
("I am Seeking an Attitude", The Progressive, May 1993)
"—hesitation and restraint make tenderness and generosity and altruistic interaction possible and even likely./ Hesitation and restraint quiver quietly alive someplace opposite to violence and domination. And I wonder about that apparently unequal equation./ Is that the problem worldwide?/ Is the female of the species some kind of noble/virtuous set-up for her male counterpart?" (145, "We Are All Refugees", The Progresive, Jul 1994)
"And maybe the unity of resistance to hatred that will stop that hatred seems improbable. […] But, meanwhile, I am moving on an irrepressible wish that all of us will: all of us will build that circle of our common safety that all of us deserve./ I'm saying, 'Are you hunting for Jews? You're looking for me!'" (220, "The Hunters and the Hunted", Oct 1999)
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