The work of writers of African heritage, whether they hail from the “old” or the “new” diaspora, has been known for its exceptional vigour and originality, and has unsurprisingly attracted the attention of scholars from all over the world. In recent years, however, criticism focusing on the production of artists from the old diaspora, either African American or Caribbean, has often examined these authors’ displaced identity in the Americas or in Europe at the expense of their African heritage and their perception of it. Even analyses of contemporary literary texts centring on the slave trade have more readily discussed writers’ representation of history than their engagement with Africa per se – the latter topic having seemingly lost the prominence that it once enjoyed in scholarly circles, as writers themselves appear to have less frequently chosen to place the continent of their ancestors at the centre of their fiction and poetry. Yet, in many cases, this African dimension still seems to play a significant role in the overall assessment and understanding of their works, and is therefore worthy of renewed critical attention.
African cultures and settings cannot be said to suffer comparable neglect in recent discussions of works by writers of the new diaspora, a category that broadly encompasses those who were born on the continent but left it either as children or as young adults. However, perhaps because these diasporic artists provide the bulk of the canon of contemporary African literatures, their perception of the continent of their birth has rarely been assessed through the lens of their geographical position, many critics preferring instead to emphasize globalizing trends or, conversely, to position diasporic artists, such as third-generation Nigerian writers, as the unproblematic heirs to the strategies of historical and cultural retrieval implemented by older Africa-based authors. Even though recent efforts have been made to circumscribe the specificity of the new diaspora’s artistic perceptions of Africa, the question still remains under-explored.
Taking our cue from Countee Cullen’s famous line – included in his 1925 poem “Heritage” – we would like to invite participants in this conference to address the diverse critical blind spots surrounding the representation of, and engagement with, Africa in the works of contemporary writers and artists from the old and the new diasporas. The questions and topics that could be addressed (either through close readings or theoretical contributions) include, but are not limited to:
- How is Africa represented in the diasporic imagination? Is it usually metaphorized or romanticized? Or, on the contrary, does it tend to be depicted in a realistic mode? Is the continent viewed as being trapped in a past marked by slavery and exploitation, or as being marred by a present of poverty and corruption? Do some diasporic artists unwillingly contribute to the perpetuation of stereotypes about Africa as a monolithic whole?
- Is Africa still relevant to the artists of the old diaspora? Does it still shape their creative minds? Is “African diaspora” a pertinent discursive category when discussing Caribbean or African American artists?
- Conversely, is the concept of “African diaspora” established enough to provide a valid critical framework in the case of the new diaspora? Do diasporic artists from North, South, East and West Africa have a common external vantage point from which to appraise the country or continent of their birth? Or, on the contrary, does their geographical location seal their common estrangement from Africa?
- What are the differences or parallels in the representations of Africa found in the works of artists of the old and new diasporas on the one hand, and those who are based in Africa on the other?
- What is the role played by gender, class, generation and/or race in the way diasporic writers perceive the culture and the land of their ancestors?
- Are categories that include references to the African continent rather empowering or limiting? How so?
- What is the role played by academics, journalists, facilitators and publishers in the dissemination of the artistic production of the old and new diasporas? To what extent do these actors encourage strategies of (self-)exoticization? Do they favour selective canonization?
- How do new technologies, particularly the internet, shape the dialogue between artists of the old and new diasporas, and those residing in Africa? Are distinctions between writers based on the continent and overseas still relevant in the twenty-first century?
- What, if anything, does Africa expect from its diasporic writers? Are these artists entitled to criticize the continent they originate from, or are they expected to treat it with special consideration? In other words, do diasporic artists have any particular ethical duty?
We welcome proposals within the field of literature, but also film, music and visual arts. Abstracts for 20-minute papers should be about 200 words, and panel descriptions for 90-minute sessions about 700 words (overall description of the panel in about 100 words, plus three individual abstracts of about 200 words). Non-Anglophone and comparative approaches are most welcome, but all papers will be delivered in English.
Proposals should be sent by 15 July 2012 to africatomenow@gmail.com. A response will reach you by 15 August 2012.
On April 27, 2012, Brandy Martell, who worked as an outreach worker serving the transgender and transsexual community, was murdered by a man who had “become enraged and shot her when he realized she was trans.”
When society doesn’t provide space for people who are thought of as different, this is what happens. Especially to transgendered women of color.
TW: trans murders, trans violence, and this is not an optimistic post, this is me processing publicly
I mostly do not know what to write about Brandi’s murder other than that I am deeply disturbed by the lack of reaction and passivity of many of the people around me. Obviously the mainstream news is not going to report on this without a fucking uproar. Obviously the paramedics did not arrive on the scene until she had been dead for twenty minutes in the lap of an #OO medic. Obviously the institutions that consistently support and uplift the lifes of straight, cis, and white people would be silent on her death. But I am generally appalled by the lack of response and apparent lack of mourning on the behalf of so many people in my life. I am the only trans person who lives in my house, and I feel lucky that last night enough friends were over/staying with us that I was able to sit on my front porch with three other lovely trans folk and cry, and talk clearly and plainly about how much we hate cis people, how we are afraid of being able to survive, how there are no safe spaces for us — not even in our own bodies. I am becoming disallusioned with spending time with any cis people at all, because even when I think that they might “get” me, there are times when the only way I can feel any shreds of safety is to be only with other trans folks, preferably trans folks of color. I wish I had been at her memorial last night, but my friend’s check-in about their time at the memoria/vigil makes it sound like it was dominated by screaming white cis bros (gay and straight) who didn’t know Brandi at all.
I am devastated, I am mourning, I am not surprised. I am violently angry. I am terrified. Brandi was murdered blocks from where my partner and friends live. But it’s like, of course that terrifies us and of course that unsettles us from any small pieces of safety we may have begun to feel, but this happens everywhere. So are we just supposed to be terrified all the fucking time?
On Thursday night I was at an event in South Berkeley (2 blocks from the Oakland — Berkeley border) that was billed as an “intergenerational queer event” where older white cis lesbians — sparked by a question regarding the inclusion of trans women in women’s spaces — talked about how trans women and trans men (they had no scope of non-binary trans folks) are disgusting, repugnant, vile, hidden rapists. It was every tumblr radscum shouting match but in real life. I had a panic attack, almost vomited, and ran outside to chainsmoke and scream and all I could think of were the murders (and “suicides”) of trans women of color.
About fifteen minutes and four cigarettes later, an elderly white cis woman from our event walked outside, attempted to cross the street and was struck by a car. It was terrible, and gruesome. I am in no way diminishing this. I am not trying to connect the actions of the radscum at the event with this woman, because I have no idea who she is or what her politics are. I was deeply disturbed by the event and prayed for that woman and that she would survive. I watched her get struck by the car, ran to the corner, and stood around while every person around called 911 (my phone was dead or I would have called, too). Within literally no longer than two minutes there were three ambulances, a fire truck, and police from both Oakland and Berkeley on scene. Lots of police. Everyone was freaked out. I heard talks of people from our event wondering if the news was going to show up. Like, queer folks were actually genuinely hoping/curious that it would get written up in the papers, to hopefully “prevent” cars from speeding down Shattuck and hitting another person.
Two days later, when I am trying to figure out how to deal with the aftermath of the event (it was organized by the non-profit I work for) a trans woman is shot and dies in Downtown Oakland, in the arms of an #OO medic, blocks from the fire station and the police station, after police walked awayfrom her. I cannot stop processing these two events in tandem with each other. It is impossible for me to think about Brandi’s murder and not think about the reaction of the people in my house when we found out, the reaction of the queers on the street when that cis woman was hit by a car, the reaction of people when they heard the radscum talk about being disgusted by trans folks, and the institutional response on the behalf of paramedics and police in both occasions. I mean obviously, fuck the police, burn every cop… car, destroy every prison. I am not surprised it happened this way. I am just so jarred by the close proximity of these events in my life, am freaked out by having cis people in my life, and don’t know what to do next.
How are my partner or my friends supposed to feel safe in the places they live when feeling safe in our own bodies is such a fucking battle? How are we supposed to feel like any form of queer safe space exists, when so quickly we are told at “LGBTQI” events that we are the scum and “cis allies” just sort of hang around not saying anything? Like, really, how am I supposed to feel like having cis people in my life is something I want to try to do, at all, in any capacity? How are we to figure out strategies to survive/fight back/mourn/continue existing when so many people really just do not give a shit whether or not we are alive tomorrow?
June 2012: raped, mutilated, shot, killed and murdered
Phumeza Nkolozi
Thapelo Makhutle
Sasha Lee Gordon
Sana Supa
Hendrieeta Thapelo Morifi
May 2012 Geneva
Navi Pillay spoke loudly against Hate Crimes in South Africa and Africa.
February 2012 Present on Hate Crimes in South Africa at CSW55
Minister of Women, children and people with disabilities Ms.Lulu Xingwana
Minister of Correctional Services Ms Nosiviwe Mapisa-Ngakula
Minister of Social Development Ms Bathabile Dlamini
Deputy Minister of Police Ms Maggie Sotyu
2011 stoned, stabbed and murdered Noxolo Magwaza
2010 raped, murdered and raped again: Nontsikelelo Tyatyeka;
2010-raped, strangled and living Milicent Gaika
2009 beaten to a pulp and later died Girly Nkosi
2008 raped, stabbed and murdered
Eudy Simelane…list continues…
Why are our Women leaders silent…when children are being killed like animals in South Africa?
As I write this article, the silence of women, mothers, and women ministers is deafening. I feel crippled and my bones are no longer strong to stand and I ask for mothers of South Africa and women to stand and fight now to end this massacre.
The list above is nothing to celebrate after Youth Day events on June 16th -celebrating the memories and strength of resisting oppression that lead to the Sharpeville massacre. The above list of youth who have lost lives in the same month we celebrate many youngsters, by year and women we are counting on to take this agenda on and stop killing your children and you to be here and fight for lives of women you know and do not event know.
How could we have celebrated Youth Day when there is again a massacre! Where are the women loving women, lesbians and gay men in my country to stand and stop this gendercide? Who is writing about us and telling the world we are being killed? We need to take stock and action as see fit to be the ones to make a change. Our sisters, mothers, aunts, lovers and women are being raped, murdered, raped again and savagely cut under the gaze of the world.
Ms. Lulu Xingwana in February 2012 she presented at CSW55 on taking action on LGBTI issues of hate crime. Three months later we have bodies of LGBTI people-killed brutally- and No word Ms Minister! The time isnow!
What has happened to women leaders in our country who have not shed a tear or been seen or heard to condemn these crimes? As many mothers cry for their murdered and watch brutally severed bodies- that are not even recognizable many appear to console and give sympathies.
So we wait for the next one and then the next and go for after tears drinks and wait for the next.
It that how we are living, by the gun so to speak?
How many lesbians, women who love women and gender-free people are in line? What are we doing? This is a war declared on our bodies and we Must Stand together and there is not time to shine as individuals. We work together or divided we are falling. Fast into the dust.
Just this past Sunday, we marched in Paris with many women who had the opportunity to be in France from South Africa, at that time bodies were found, women shot, raped and I fear that the silence of our women leaders is serving our deaths. We are in danger with no choice to life.
We marched in solidarity with the world and all people who know of humanity-mothers, fathers, and brothers. Muholi also remarked that the march was for all LGBTI individuals who can’t because of homophobia, lesbophobia, queerphobia, transphobia, xenophobia… all the phobia that are there to be. We made a mark and our presence was clearly heartfelt by those who were there and yet the reality back home is just too scary to imagine, she said.
Muholi said, “Rape has made us powerless, though we threw our hands in the air and said ‘Amandla’ it is a pity that power we supposed to claim is imaginary as we continue to lose our LGBT people along the way”. Muholi, who brought her all women football team Thokozani to participate the Foot for Love Games said she was feeling destroyed inside at the silence of women ministers in particular, those stood in at the Commission on the Status of Women to protect our rights to life. We are worthy women too!
“They read newspapers and none of them have said a word. It is disheartening and I feel crashed at the thought of families who are going through this pain”, she said. And yes we all hear it and it is time that we stand and speak to our mothers and save lives that are falling so fast to dust as we weep and mourn for another life lost.
Mothers, mothers who is protecting your children when they are being attacked and raped and no voice speak to say enough! The men, who are allowed to rape, kill and rape at will -as they please at their pleasure. Is this the freedom we talk about?
We cannot be silenced any longer and those in power that we all vested for you to represent us Stand Up! I am standing! Are you?
This is not JUST to brutally take lives as though they are free for taking! We will not be silenced and-if you choose to remain silent and unheard- then you have blood on your hands! Justice must prevail for all and I call you, you and you to end violence.
How do stereotypes, perceptions and expectations influence how men and women interact with each other when they are of different races or ethnic backgrounds? In the racialized world in which we live, if a white woman becomes intimate with a black man, are there certain expectations that she has of a black man that she wouldn’t have of a white man simply based on perceived notions, hearsay and stereotypes? Whether people tend to accept stereotypes as true or ignore the stereotypes and judge each person as an individual, there will be those who will use particular stereotypes to their advantage. As this is somewhat of a follow up to part one on the fetishization of the black Brazilian male body, let's consider the story of Cleyton, a 6'1", 27 year old man from Rio de Janeiro.
Cleyton takes advantage of the image of the black male by renting out his sexual services to women through Rio's newspapers. After only 6 months in the game, Cleyton was already charging a pretty penny for his services. His clients are middle and upper class 30-ish women, the majority being married and "curiously, all white". Sometimes these women are actually accompanied by their husbands.
"I don't understand how the life of two apparently happy (people) need a third (person)", says Cleyton. What is it that these women are looking for in him? Do they ever say? "Yes. They believe that black men are more passionate, more active and mainly more hung." Cleyton suspects that his clients would not date black men even if they could. "I am a pure fetish, they don't openly accept crioulos (niggas)", he says with certainty and a touch a irony. Cleyton details one of his many trysts.
"One of the women that sought my services said that she has only been happy with black men, but because of family barriers, she couldn't marry him. From then and up to now, her extra-conjugal life limits itself to black men".
Model Gisele Bündchen
When asked what couples seek in his services, he says:
"Generally, it is the husbands, always white men, that appear and request that I perform the role of the strong, virile, masculine man", a role that he never turns down. Lest we think that Cleyton's story is only one example and not enough from which to draw any conclusions, anthropologist Laura Moutinho interviewed many white Brazilian women for her book Razão, “cor” e desejo on interracial relationships and she reported that these women consistently told her that black men were "hotter", "more virile" and sexually superior to white men. This idea in regards to black men is by no means new or restricted to Brazil. Consider the 2007 story that revealed older white women traveling to Kenya for sexual tourism. Or the 2005 film Heading South(Vers le sud) based on white women traveling to Haiti for the same purposes. Haitian-Canadian Dany Laferrière certainly played on this image with his provocatively titled How To Make Love To A Negro Without Getting Tired (Comment faire l'amour avec un nègre sans se fatiguer), a 1985 novel which would be turned into a film. And if anyone is in doubt about the stereotype in the US, a quick visit to the DVD store, or better yet, a Google search of terms like "BBC" will show why interracial porn is such a niche market. Sure these stereotypes certainly help sell a lot DVDs by those who continue to fetishize interracial sex, but again, my question is, do these images somehow improve the global image of black men or do they contribute to their denigration?
Beyond all of the "is it true what they say" hype, how would a relationship play itself out if a man didn't quite live up to the image that the woman had of him if this image wasn't necessarily true? If a man who is racialized as the “other” doesn’t meet the established standard of what his race is imagined to be, is there a penalty for this “shortcoming”? In this given scenario, how should this interaction be dealt with?
Gisele Bündchen
Raquel Souza’s research provides an excellent example of the ways that images and stereotypes connected to ideas about race play out in matters of sexual relationships and expectations. Below, I cite liberally from the work of Souza on the topics of race, perceptions and meanings in the interactions between black men and white women in Brazil’s two largest cities, Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. Souza's research deals with perceptions of what it means to be a man. In terms of the connection between manhood and sexuality, here are the comments of two black men, ages 23 and 20, that Souza interviewed for the project.
Marcos - "You have to be the man, you have to give pleasure to women. Previously, to prove that you were the man, you had the control, the issue was yours. If she didn’t feel pleasure, the problem was hers. No one even wanted to hear it. Only now you have that obligation to give pleasure to the woman. This is machismo, because you have to prove that you are good. In the past you didn’t have to do this."
Wagner – "In the past, the woman didn’t have access to information. Today, women have access to information and know how they want to have sex. She knows what she wants. If the guy is not good, she doesn’t stay with him. In the past it wasn’t like that."
With those comments in mind, read on as the following is an incident described by Rodrigues as told to her by Wagner, a single, 20-year black man from São Paulo:
It was in one of these strolls through Vila Madalena* that he met a middle class white girl, who told him about her preference for having relationships with black men, considering their physical specificities and skin color. The guy was surprised by the girl’s declaration as he didn’t fit this characterization because he was tall and thin and lacked a muscular physique. Despite the strangeness of that day, they exchanged affections, got together from time to time, and finally, making reference to the sexual act, they went to bed. Despite the girl's statement about her preference for black guys, Wagner found that during and after intercourse, the girl expressed fear that he would hurt her. She believed that black men had a different sexual potency and augmented genitalia. Wagner revealed that he was annoyed with her attitude:
"We had sex. Afterwards, she was like this (laughs)...We were having sex and she said: 'Be careful, look at your color and look at mine.' She said this! Oh, I said, 'Great!'. Then, after we had sex, she said that it had been different. But what's the difference? I had to talk to somebody about this, because I had never heard that in my life. I had heard this story that a negão (big, black man) has a different "pegada"**, which does damage, but for me, no one had ever said this. Who knows! I think I'm normal, I'm not that negão like that. (...) I’m very relaxed in relation to this [sex], like, I'm good, in my way. Up to the point that I had not had a relationship [losing his virginity], of course, you get nervous, you get very anxious, but then you discover how it is, then you relax. But you don’t expect certain comments. I think if I was on top of her only wanting to have sex, like, like the first time, wanting to knock it out and stuff, then you would expect a comment like that, but I didn’t do that. It was different because I’m calm, I expected her to say something different. Perhaps it could have even been unpleasant, like, 'Oh! You're so calm '. But, to say what she said didn’t hit me too good."
The implication of the girl clashed with Wagner’s self-image of a calm and quiet guy. He preferred that the girl would have perceived him as “normal.” The relationship did not continue and the experience was narrated by him as a new dilemma posed as a result of contact with new social groups, in which he had to negotiate ways of seeing himself and being seen. A perception about the singularity of black masculinity came across, with emphasis on sexual characters and body proportions - strength, height, violence, size. Now, it was no longer his (male) friend, who intentionally took care of his body, keeping it toned, and, therefore, having more prestige with the girls, but Wagner himself, by accident, was identified as a “typical” black man.
Wagner re-encountered in this experience different considerations and perceptions of white and black men, but now in his own experience, from an insinuation about his racial condition. As has been said, “aesthetic metaphors, virility, proportion, size and performance, are often invoked to differentiate the black man from the white man” (Moutinho 2004), evidenced in the sexual-erotic axis a sexual superiority of the former, a racial hierarchy that articulates moral and intellectual ability, beauty and eroticism. This difference, far from being grounded in empirical data, constructed on stereotypes about the black group, dating back to more atavistic ideas about these specificities and especially the type of relationship that is established when this man finds himself with a white woman.
Laura Moutinho (2004), analyzing the representation of interracial couples in Brazilian literature, notes that there is a taboo regarding the relationship between a black man and a white woman, whose destinies of couples like these are so constituted to invariably tragic outcomes, and commonly experienced episodes of sexual lust and rape. The embarrassment of Wagner at the situation seems to lie precisely in the girl's considerations about his sexual performance and a possible rape. Now, the fear of having seemed a little careful and therefore able to “knock it out” and cause “damage” seemed to bring to the fore his panic of possible insinuations about the advantages of his physical structure.
There are a few key points to analyze in Wagner's account of what went down between himself and a young white girl. First in the context of his comments and the comments of his friend Marcos, they both affirm that in order to be seen as a man and "the man", a male must be able to satisfy his partner sexually. While this wasn't true in the past, it is certainly true now and both men accepted this as a reality. Thus, going into his encounter with the young lady, Wagner brought with him a perception of manhood that he would have to live up to. But then when the sexual encounter took place with the young (white) woman, he was reminded of a second image that he needed to live up to: that of the virile, well-hung, dangerous, black man ("negão") whose rugged nature would dominate and cause "damage" to the unsuspecting white girl. But Wagner wasn't this type of black man and when he didn't live up to the image that she had of him, she laughed and said he was "different" from what she had expected of a black man. In his words, he was "normal" and "calm" when it seems that she expected "thug life."
In Brazil, the image and stereotype of the black man is influenced by not only national images such as the capoeira*** master, the soccer player and national rappers, but the international image of the black American athlete, actor and gangster rapper also dominate the Brazilian media. In Wagner's view, he had been "othered" by a person of the opposite gender and race. He wanted to be seen as "normal" but part of the attraction that some women have for black men is associated with the "out of the ordinary", dangerous, aggressive, animalistic qualities that are the polar opposites of the image of society's standard bearer of masculinity, the white male. In essence, the black man, and black people in general, are victims of the double-edged sword: In the case of black men, although they wish to be accepted as normal, regular citizens that are not constantly vilified in the minds of society, they also cherish certain qualities of being seen as the "other". In the scenario above, it is possible that Wagner would not have even been given the opportunity of experiencing intimacy with the young white girl if some or most of her perceptions of him weren't based on certain stereotypes of young, black males. On the other hand, had the myth of what black masculinity represented never been part of her imagination, maybe she wouldn't have judged him to be somehow "different" and thus possibly seen him as more of a complete person rather than some construction of society's imagination.
Although Brazil is imagined to be a place where race doesn't matter and a place where the races mixes far more frequently than in Europe or the United States, racial differences, perceptions and stereotypes are just as frequent. There are an abundance of examples throughout this blog and this will become even more evident in future blog posts.
* - Vila Madalena is a upper middle class neighborhood of the Pinheiros district in the western part of the city of São Paulo
** - One definition of "pegada" is footprint, but used in sexual terms, "pegada" means some exceptional quality that a man (or woman) has in terms of kissing, affection or having sex with someone. Researching the term online, various persons defined "pegada" in this way: the touch, when a person knows how bring out the desire of another person, to be good in bed, a certain style of affection.
*** - Capoeira is a Brazilian martial art that combines elements of dance, and music. It was created in Brazil mainly by descendants of African slaves with Brazilian native influences, probably beginning in the 16th century.
Sources: "Rapazes negros e socialização de gênero: sentidos e significados de "ser homem”" by Raquel Souza and "Homem fetiche" by Wedencley Alves from Black People, Issue 8, Year 2, Number 2.
I am an Eastern Europe born portrait photographer in Charlotte, North Carolina. My work predominantly focuses on, but is not exclusive to, women of African descent. Always looking to photograph interesting individuals with quiet free-spiritedness. If you would like to be photographed or merely wish to say 'hello', please drop me a note. My portraiture book, Black Venus, Vol. 1, is now available for purchase worldwide: http://blackvenusproject.com/book
“I write for as many different people as I can, acknowledging that in any problem situation you have at least two viewpoints to be reached,” June Jordan said in a Publishers Weekly interview. “I’m also interested in telling the truth as I know it.” By the mid-1990s Jordan had become one of the country’s most prominent contemporary black women writers. A nationally renowned lecturer and activist, she produced an extensive and varied body of work, through which she strongly affirmed herself, herrights as a woman, her thoughts on black consciousness, and her ties to the African-American community. Though she was best known for her intimate, powerfully direct poetry, Jordan also wrote award-winning children’s fiction, highly charged nonfiction pieces, plays, and songs.
Jordan’s poetry and other works reflect her belief in addressing the concerns of audiences of color, exploring black life, creating better living conditions for black families, and enhancing black culture. While self-realization is crucial, Jordan also believed in shared human goals for a better society; her poetry enabled her to express her political ideas while making art. She was frequently compared with politically conscious black poets such as Nikki Giovanni and Amiri Baraka, but her verse bore traces of other influences, including those of white American poet Walt Whitman, whose self-celebratory poems she admired.
Jordan’s varied works include her debut book of poems, titled Who Look at Me; her first young adult novel, His Own Where, which was nominated for the National Book Award and written entirely in black English; a biography written for young readers about Mississippi activist Fannie Lou Hamer, who struggled for black voting rights; the classic verse collection Things That I Do in the Dark; the essay collection Civil Wars, about violence in America from the 1960s to the 1980s; Naming Our Destiny, a 30-year compilation of poetry; and the 1992 book of essays, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union.
In all, Jordan published twenty-seven books. One of her last books, Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood, published in 2000 is an autobiography and discusses her early childhood with an almost indifferent mother and sometimes brutally abusive father in some detail. In an Essence magazine interview with Alexis DeVeaux,
Born on July 9, 1936, in New York, NY; died June 14, 2002, in Berkeley, CA; daughter of Granville Ivanhoe (a postal clerk) and Mildred Maude (a nurse; maiden name, Fisher) Jordan; married Michael Meyer, 1955 (divorced, 1965); children: Christopher David. Education: Attended Barnard College and University of Chicago.
Career: Poet, prose writer, educator, activist. Assisted producer for film The Cool World, 1963-64; City College of the City University of New York, instructor, 1966-68, assistant professor of English, 1975-76; Yale University, visiting lecturer in English and Afro-American studies, 1974-75; taught English and directed Search for Education, Elevation and Knowledge (SEEK Program) at Connecticut College, New London, 1967-69; taught literature at Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, 1969-74; State University of New York at Stony Brook, assistant professor, 1978-82, professor of English, 1982-89, director of poetry center and creative writing program, 1986-89; professor of Afro-American Studies and Women’s Studies at University of California at Berkeley, 1989-02.
Memberships: Board member, Center for Constitutional Rights, 1984-02, New York Foundation for the Arts, and PEN American Center.
Awards: Rockefeller grant for creative writing, 1969-70; Nancy Bloch Award, 1971, for The Voice of the Children; chosen one of the year’s best young adult novelists, New York Times, 1971; National Book Award nomination, 1971, for His Own Where; Yaddo fellow, 1979-80; National Endowment for the Arts fellow in poetry, 1982; award for international reporting from National Association of Black Journalists, 1984; New York Foundation for the Arts fellow in poetry, 1985; Writers for Writers Award from Barnes & Noble. 2001.
Jordan summed up her relationship with the two of them. “My mother was shadowy. I would be very hard-put to tell you what about me, about the way I am or think, comes from my mother. My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.” She also told De Veaux that the message that she hoped to send to young black girls who read Soldier is that the girl can survive and become the woman—that she need not assume a victim mentality that she can take control and overcome adversity.
Born in Harlem on July 9, 1936, Jordan was the only child of hardworking immigrant parents who moved to New York City from the island of Jamaica. Her father, Granville Ivanhoe Jordan, held a night position at the U.S. Postal Service, while her mother, Mildred, worked as a nurse. Jordan spent her first five years in Harlem before the family moved to the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn. It was there that she wrote her first poems at the age of seven. Her concern with her family and locale stayed with her into adulthood and prompted her to write in her essay collection Civil Wars:“You begin with your family and the kids on the block, and next you open your eyes to what you call your people and that leads you into land reform into Black English into Angola [and that] leads you back to your own bed.”
Jordan’s childhood was a painful one. She grew up in a home where her father beat her out of his own sense of oppression while her mother stood passively by. These early experiences contributed to her passionate search for self-realization—a search that was delayed by her parents’ decision to send her for three years to an all-white New England preparatory school, the Northfield School for Girls in Massachusetts. In her English classes there, she studied almost exclusively the work of white male poets, which she later acknowledged had a stifling effect on her growth as an African-American artist.
After graduating from prep school, Jordan entered Barnard College in the fall of 1953. There she met Michael Meyer, a Columbia University student, whom she married in 1955. Because Meyer was white, the couple experienced the anguish of intense racial prejudice—during the pre-civil rights era in the United States, interracial marriages were against the law in many states. Jordan interrupted her schooling at Barnard in 1955 for a year of studies at the University of Chicago, where her husband was getting his graduate degree in anthropology; she returned to Barnard the next year.
Two years later, their son, Christopher David Meyer, was born. But Jordan’s relationship with her husband was deteriorating. Increasingly she was raising and supporting her son alone and developing her own varied interests in poetry, journalism, the civil rights movement, and the Harlem community. She assisted a documentary filmmaker in producing a film about Harlem’s street kids called The Cool World. She also worked on a proposal with architect Buckminster Fuller to build low-cost, aesthetic housing in the Harlem community. Her work of the period was extensively influenced by her surroundings, by the Black Power Movement of the 1960s and by the factors that lead to the Harlem riots of 1964, which she observed and wrote about.
After she and her husband divorced in 1965, Jordan supported herself and her son alone and took various teaching positions. She taught English and literature at the City College of the City University of New York, Connecticut College, Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. By 1982 she had been named a full professor at SUNY Stony Brook, and four years later she was directing the school’s poetry center and creative writing program. She began teaching Afro-American and women’s studies at the University of California at Berkeley in 1989.
After the publication of her first book of poetry, Who Look at Me, in 1969, Jordan wrote a series of powerful works that chronicled her life’s struggle and reflected her growing maturity. The title poem in this first book best shows her movement away from victimization and toward resistance; in it she wrote about the way she thought many white people of that era viewed people of color: “A white stare splits obliterates/the nerve-wrung wrist from work/the breaking ankle or/the turning glory/of a spine. Although the world/forgets me/I will say yes/AND NO. I am black, alive and looking back at you.”
By the time her major collection of poetry, Things That I Do in the Dark, edited by novelist Toni Morrison, was published in 1977, Jordan viewed herself thus: “I am a stranger/learning to worship the strangers on earth/around me/whoever you are/whoever I may become.” In her heavily autobiographical essay book Civil Wars, published four years later, Jordan describes an American landscape torn apart by racial tension and violence. Black writer Toni Cade Bambara summarized the book and put it in historical context in Ms. magazine: “[Civil Wars is a] chilling but profoundly hopeful vision of living in the USA. Jordan’s vibrant spirit manifests itself throughout this collection of articles, letters, journal entries, and essays. What is fundamental to that spirit is caring, commitment, a deep-rooted belief in the sanctity of life. Civil Wars is an ‘autobiography’ very much in the vein of Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept, by W. E. B. Du Bois, the distinguished black scholar and activist of an earlier generation.”
Jordan’s works reveal an unwavering concern for basic human rights and equity for all people. In her “Poem About My Rights,” which appeared in her famous collection about violence in society titled Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, she expresses rage and frustration at racial and sexual discrimination: “We are the wrong people of /the wrong skin on the wrong continent. It was my father saying I was wrong saying that/I should have been a boy because he wanted one. I am the history of the rejection of who I am.” But she also affirms herself and vows to defend herself if necessary: “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.”
Critics have underscored Jordan’s simultaneously personal and universal appeal, as well as her use of Black English and irony. She is “a poet for many people, speaking in a voice they cannot fail to understand about things they will want to know,” commented Susan Mernit in Library Journal “[Passion] elucidates those moments when personal life and political struggle, two discrete elements, suddenly entwine.” Commenting on the power and skill of Jordan’s writings, Ms. magazine contributor Joan Larkin wrote, “June Jordan’s language is a high energy blend of street and literary idiom. Irony is basic to Jordan’s perception of a violent, antiblack, antifemale culture.” Other reviewers acknowledged her adherence to a black oral tradition. In a lengthy essay in African American Review, Scott MacPhail discusses Jordan’s role as a black intellectual. About Jordan he says, “June Jordan’s career thus inspires a broadening of our expectations for what an African-American intellectual can and should do, and how she can do it.”
Because of her personal experiences, Jordan often expressed identification with other nonwhite peoples around the globe who seek self-determination. Her books On Call and Living Room, collections of essays and poetry respectively, reflect her identification with the Palestinian people. In the 1980s her scathing poetic and prose criticism of Israeli policy concerning Lebanon and the Palestinians generated considerable controversy.
And, at other times on other topics, Jordan has drawn fire from critics for being one-sided and rhetorical. In 1989 when Naming Our Destiny—her compilation of poetry spanning three decades—was published along with previously uncollected verse, Publishers Weekly commented: “[Jordan] attempts to shoulder too many causes here, at times losing herself in rhetoric and politics that could benefit from a fuller discussion. However, in her best work, Jordan takes an infectious delight in language, playing with words to transform experience. She makes artful use of rhyme, and draws from slave ballads and blues music to protest the everyday human tribulations that otherwise might go unnoticed. We witness the author progressing from a youthful struggle with identity to a mature feminist assertion of the rights of all people.”
In her 1992 collection of essays, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Jordan discusses her immigrant Brooklyn family’s quest for the American dream; she also deals with enduring stereotypes about race and class, as well as myths surrounding African-American historical figures from Martin Luther King, Jr., to Anita Hill. Commented Adele Logan Alexander in the Women’s Review of Books,“June Jordan has a prolific intellect and a vast reservoir of extraordinary and broad-based knowledge, yet her writing maintains its solid grounding in everyday experience.” Though Jordan’s voice often made those who support the status quo uncomfortable, her clear aim was to raise questions about the way we live and to provide people with visions of future alternatives.
In her written work and her activities, Jordan worked throughout her life to make sure that the black community remembered to value the black experience and black culture. She campaigned for the recognition of Black English and wrote several poems, essays, and a full-length book, His Own Where, in Black English. Two of her essays, “Nobody Mean More to Me Than You” and “White English/Black English: The Politics of Translation” explain why she felt Black English is important and why it should be studied as a dialect. In her later years, Jordan often took up the cause of black figures that she felt needed it. In one if her essays she speaks out against the black leadership in America for their failure to back Anita Hill in the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings. In another she wrote a “Requiem for the Champ,” speaking about the forces that formed Mike Tyson and caused him to react with such violence. She explains that in determining responsibility for this type of violence, we must look to the community and economic structure that formed the man—she says “There must be some way for our culture to reward a black man for something other than violence; there must be something else for a black man from the ghetto to do or be.”
In 1995, in a rather interesting side track to her career, Jordan collaborated with composer John Adams and director Peter Sellers in a romantic musical that explored life in late 20th century Los Angeles. The result was a short-lived production called I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I saw the Sky. In a review for Insight on the News, Gale Hanson writes “But the best anyone could wish for this ill-conceived and badly executed effort is that the stage floor would open and swallow the production whole.”
Much of Jordan’s written work is drawn from her own life and experiences. Perhaps the clearest indication of her character can be found in her introduction to Civil Wars. Here she talks about how her uncle helped her learn to stand up to the bullies in this world—“It’s a bully. Probably you can’t win. But if you go in there, saying to yourself, ‘I may not win this one but it’s going to cost you’ they’ll leave you alone.” It is apparent that she lived her life with this philosophy. “nobody fought me twice,” she continues in the introduction. “They said I was ‘crazy’.” She spent her life working for the improvement of conditions in the black community and in many other areas where she thought there were inequalities and injustice.
In early 2002 Jordan received the 2001 Writers for Writers Award from Barnes & Noble. She was honored as a writer who had given generously to other writers and helped broaden the literary community. In particular, she was praised for her work in establishing the organization Poetry for the People. This organization offers free poetry workshops in high schools, community centers, churches and prisons in underprivileged communities.
Jordan died on June 14, 2002 in San Francisco at the age of 65. She had breast cancer. She leaves a legacy of her writings for future generations to read and emulate.
Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 38: Afro-American Writers After 1955: Dramatists and Prose Writers, Gale, 1985.
Jordan, June, Who Look at Me, Crowell, 1969.
Jordan, June, Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poetry, edited by Toni Morrison, Random House, 1977.
Jordan, June, Passion: New Poems, 1977-1980, Beacon Press, 1980.
Jordan, June, Civil Wars, Beacon Press, 1981.
Jordan, June, Technical Difficulties: African American Notes on the State of the Union, Pantheon Books, 1992.
Norton Anthology of Modern Poetry, Norton, 1988, p. 1467.
Periodicals
African American Review, Fall 1998, p. 504; Spring 1999, p. 57.
Essence, October 1992; September 2000, p. 102.
Insight on the News, June 12, 1995, p. 33.
Lambda Book Report, April 2002, p.32.
Library Journal, November 1, 1989, p. 92.
Los Angeles Times, January 21, 1992, p. E-l.
Ms., April 1975; April 1981; July/August 1990, p. 71.
Nation, January 29, 1990, p. 135.
New Statesman, June 5, 1987, p. 38; January 6, 1989, p. 31.
Ou t magazine, December 1992/January 1993.
Progressive, October 1989, p. 12; February 1991, p. 18; July 1991, p. 12; November 1991, p. 11; January 1992, p. 11; February 1992, p. 18; March 1992, p. 13; June 1992, p. 12.
Publishers Weekly, May 1, 1981, pp. 12-13; October 27, 1989, p. 62; August 17, 1992; May 8, 2000 p. 218; July 8, 2002, p. 42.
• July 8, 1908 Louis Jordan, pioneering jazz, blues, and R&B musician, songwriter and bandleader, was born in Brinkley, Arkansas. Jordan studied music under his father and during his youth played in his father’s bands. In 1932, Jordan moved to New York City and in 1936 joined the influential Savoy Ballroom orchestra where he played until 1938. Jordan’s first recording was in 1938 and over his career he had at least four million-selling hits, including “G.I. Jive” (1944), “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby” (1944), “Caldonia” (1945), and “Choo Choo Ch’Boogie” (1946). During the 1940s, Jordon had 18 number one and 54 top ten singles on the “race charts.” His records spent 113 weeks at number one, the most by any black recording artist to this day. Jordon died February 4, 1975. The United States Postal Service featured Jordon and the film “Caldonia” on a postage stamp and the 1992 Broadway show, “Five Guys Named Moe” was devoted to Jordan’s music. Jordan was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1975 and in 2008 the United States House of Representatives passed a resolution honoring Jordan on the centenary of his birth. His biography, “Let the Good Times Roll: The Story of Louis Jordan and His Music,” was published in 1994.
(Note: The term "Third Culture Kid" is discussed thoroughly on Wikipedia. Check it out.)
THE WORLDS WITHIN – AN ANTHOLOGY OF TCK ART AND WRITING: YOUNG, GLOBAL AND BETWEEN CULTURES
Eva Laszlo-Herbert, Jo Parfitt and Cerine Jin are compiling an anthology of TCK art and writing, as a first volume of a bigger project, which aims to make the lives and stories of worldwide TCKs and TCAs visible and graspable.
They plan to launch it in March 2013, at the 2013 Annual Conference of Families in Global Transition (www.figt.org) in Silver Spring, MD, USA.
The Anthology: We will select up to 100 contributions and publish them at Summertime Publishing, a publishing company that specialises in book by and for people living abroad. www.summertimepublishing.com.
SUBMISSIONS
We look forward to receiving high resolution art work and written submissions – from haiku to short story – of up to 2000 words, on any aspect of TCK life, by authors who were younger than 27 at the moment of writing.
The deadline for submissions is 15 October 2012.
Submissions can be sent to TCKTheWorldsWithin@gmail.com, in plain Times New Roman 12 font. Artwork will be published in black and white and must be submitted in the highest possible resolution.
Authors, aged 0-27, have the explicit right to remain anonymous or submit their work using a nom-de-plume.
Minimum requirements that need to accompany submissions: A name, the age when the submitted work was created, countries the author has lived in and a three word motto, which is relevant to their life (Eva’s, for example is: connect – contribute – celebrate). If desired, they may add any information – website, blog, email, twitter – by which their art / writing can be followed, for example: Jane Chen, 12, Korea, Australia; positive, thoughtful, expressive; www.janesblog.com, @janesblog
The texts will be organised by age.
THE ANTHOLOGY: We will select up to 100 contributions and publish them at Summertime Publishing, a publishing company that specialises in book by and for people living abroad. www.summertimepublishing.com. The cover features art work by Beth Eisinger, a TCK artist who grew up in the Midwest, Germany and Turkey.
All submissions will be presented to The Expatriate Archive Centre in The Hague, The Netherlands, where they will be preserved and available to the public for future reading and research.
We truly hope that our project will inspire you to become a promoter and a multiplicator. Please spread the word within your networks – locally and globally.
Contact us at TCKTheWorldsWithin@gmail.com or by calling +31.65.365.31.21 and let us know how we can make this project better, and more meaningful.
Grants of up to $2,500 each are given twice yearly by the Leeway Foundation to women and transsexual, transgender, genderqueer, and Two-Spirit poets, fiction writers, and creative nonfiction writers in the Philadelphia area who need financial assistance to work on a project involving art and social change. Writers living in Bucks, Camden, Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, or Philadelphia counties who are 18 years of age or older and who are not full-time students in a degree-granting arts program are eligible. Applicants must identify a person, an organization, or a business as a project partner. Submit an application by August 1. There is no entry fee. Call, e-mail, or visit the website for complete guidelines.
Leeway Foundation, Art and Change Grants, The Philadelphia Building, 1315 Walnut Street, Suite 832, Philadelphia, PA 19107. (215) 545-4078. Sham-e-Ali Nayeem, Program Director.
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