June Jordan Critical Essay | Critical Essay by P. Jane Splawn

SOURCE: "New World Consciousness in the Poetry of Ntozake Shange and June Jordan: Two African-American Women's Response to Expansionism in the Third World," in CLA Journal, Vol. XXXIX, No. 4, June 1996, pp. 417-31.

In the following essay, Splawn examines the work of Ntozake Shange and June Jordan, in which she finds examples of "a New World aesthetic."

     And who will join in this standing up
     and the ones who stood without sweet company
     will sing and sing
     back into the mountains and
     if necessary
     even under the sea
 
     we are the ones we have been waiting for.
 
                           —June Jordan, "Poem for South African Women"
 
     of course he's lumumba
     see only the eyes/bob marley wail
     in the night ralph featherstone
     burning temples as pages of books
     become ashen and smolder by his ankles
     walter rodney's blood fresh soakin
     the streets/leon damas spoke poems
     with his face/cesaire cursed our
     enemies/making welcome our true voice.
 
                    —Ntozake Shange, "irrepressibly bronze, beautiful & mine"

I

Poet June Jordan asks in the first...
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