Reading June Jordan’s work was transformational.
Each essay of the twenty-two in the book offered different insights into June’s world, the sharp and unapologetic way she critiques that which she sees, especially about racism, children’s rights, and police brutality.
I need to stop being surprised when a someone’s words resonant and feel current even when written so long ago.
Especially when the writing is by a Black person.
Especially when the writing is a by a Black womxn.
With the Boston Writing Project summer book club, I wrote a short piece in response to her work.
It’s difficult to respond to such brilliance but I tried.
Zita doesn’t want to be this way. She wants to be the inspiring and inspired anti-racist educator that she reads about in so many books. But she’s not. She’s tired. She is a beautifully complex Black woman who is many things at once that are not always fully recognized in our world. But the one she feels the most right now is tired.
Zita always feels inspired when she leaves one of the many conferences, classes, or webinars she’s always signing up for. She can feel the transformation coursing through her body, the same way in which she imagines she can sometimes feel the actual blood in her body.
Zita’s inspiration never lasts long enough for her to make any real chances though, changes that make her feel like the ardent social justice warrior slash abolitionist slash anti-racist educator she wants to be. She reads all the on-topic books that top the bestseller lists and even the ones that are less known to those putting in the work. But her tiredness gets still in the way. And sometimes those words make her more confused than hopeful. She only wishes she could figure out how to write the way they do. Or even have the thoughts in her head.
Zita is tired, tired of the way things are and unsure of how to change anything that really matters. Tired of being tired and still not able to transform the worlds she exists in the way she wants.
Even as Zita stares out of her window, catching the rising sun and with it a sense of hope, she cannot figure out what to write about for her upcoming response group. She has spent hours pouring over June Jordan’s trying to find the exact way in which Auntie June’s brilliance slash excellence slash grace can fold into her own. How can her phrases influence Zita’s own words? Phrases like nothing that is Good for The People is good unless it is good for me or it is the darkness of my skin and not my gender that seems to precipitate holocaust invasion of my life and so, so much more. All of it being far more eloquent articulations of emotions Zita scribbled in the journals of her younger years.
Here it was happening again, the transformational effect the words of someone else have on her body, her mind. These words that help tell her story, and from someone she actually wants to help. And she wished life could soak up those words through her every pore, creating spaces in which she could harness those words like the energy . Activism and action were so hard to do.
Finally Zita lays her pen down, frustrated by her inability to create anything. Her handwritten scratches are not making any sense. She fell asleep for a long time, something she does when she needs steps to endure and continue and cannot figure out where they are. When her eyes flutter open later, she wakes up to Auntie June Jordan sitting right next to her. Which isn’t possible for several reasons but was happening all the same.
Neither Zita nor Auntie June acknowledged the strangeness of this moment. And from Auntie June’s mouth flows words, words, words, words. Words about declaring independence, about recognition of self, about moderation of behavior, about adult-constructed circumstances, about identity erasure, about assumptions of different communities, about children as constructors of their lifestories, about indifference, about thriving in your truest self amidst opposition, about myths of Black womanhood, about creating alternatives for all to feel safe, about self-love, self-respect and LOVE.
And Zita’s heart felt full. As all of Auntie June disappeared but her words tumbled into just the right spot in that heart.
As if they were always meant to exist there.
Zita picked up her pen again.
