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to Keep Women in Print main pageFriday, June 14, 2002 (AP)
June Jordan, a poet, activist and one of America's most prolific
black writers, died Friday morning at her Berkeley home surrounded by close
friends and family. She was 65.
Jordan had struggled with breast cancer for several years.
"She was a marvelous poet," said her longtime friend,
poet Adrienne Rich.
"She wrote really elegant and beautiful prose ... she wrote generously and
knowledgeably about pretty much everything in the world."
Prolific and versatile, with passions ranging from feminism to
race to teaching, Jordan was among the most published black writers in history.
Born in Harlem to West Indian immigrants, she began writing
poetry early in life and became involved in the civil rights movement while a student
at Barnard College.
Jordan published 28 books, including several volumes of poetry,
political essays and children's fiction. Her final book of essays, "Some of Us Did
Not Die" is scheduled to be published in September. Her memoir,
"Soldier, A Poet's Childhood," was published in 1999.
In a statement issued when that memoir was published, Nobel
laureate Toni Morrison praised Jordan's "40 years of activism fueled by flawless
art."
Jordan also wrote the libretto to the opera, "I Was Looking
at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky," by director Peter Sellars with music by
John Adams. Several of her poems were set to music.
Jordan was a professor of African American Studies at the
University of California, Berkeley, where she began teaching in 1989. At Berkeley, she
founded the group Poetry for the People, which encourages poetry and writing by young
people and others in the community.
Jordan previously taught at Yale University, Sarah Lawrence
College and the State University of New York, Stony Brook.
She received a Rockefeller Grant for Creative Writing and special
congressional recognition for her work in the progressive and civil rights
movements and for her writing.
Jordan is survived by her son, Christopher Meyer, who was with
her when she died.
On the Net:
KQED interview, 1999 (with audio links)