SOURCE: "The Mother Tongue," in Belles Letters, Vol. 10, No. 2, Spring, 1995, pp. 68-70.

In the following excerpt, Smith considers the thematic and stylistic features of Jordan's prose.

The twinning of politics and poetics as a literary strategy in African-American women's writing is dictated by a variety of circumstances, combined with temperament, intellect, and literary perspicacity. Even so, the tradition has become over time an almost indigenous response, like race memory, a kind of mother tongue; and these titles, with one exception, embrace it well. Among them are June Jordan and Nikki Giovanni, unquestioned exemplars of those currently practicing this art successfully.

Melding memoir to the presentation and analysis of the cultural and political evolution of an entire community is a tricky business. However, particularly in the case of a "nonpublic" person, it is critical that insight into the universal application of the individual life be clear and unambiguous, and...