On Call: Political Essays

by June Jordan

Book of political essays by a great Feminist.

Genres: Politics, Nonfiction, Essays, Race, Feminism

155 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1985

About the author

June Millicent Jordan (July 9, 1936 – June 14, 2002) was a Caribbean-American poet and activist.

Jordan received numerous honors and awards, including a 1969-70 Rockefeller grant for creative writing, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1979, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1982, and the Achievement Award for International Reporting from the National Association of Black Journalists in 1984. Jordan also won the Lila Wallace Reader's Digest Writers Award from 1995 to 1998 as well as the Ground Breakers-Dream Makers Award from The Woman's Foundation in 1994.

She was included in Who's Who in America from 1984 until her death. She received the Chancellor's Distinguished Lectureship from UC Berkeley and the PEN Center USA West Freedom to Write Award (1991).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[zara · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a balm to the soul. I loved the essays in this book. Several of these essays are also in “Some of Us Did Not Die,” but still, I loved reading them again.

[Bek (MoonyReadsByStarlight) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredible! Another instance where we would do well to read backlist for perspective on our current situation (concerning a number of global issues, as well as what we still see here in the US). There are some truly unforgettable essays in here.

[Matt B · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honestly, this may be my favorite literary book of all time, by that i just mean not meant to be read as a textbook or other non-fiction types. Rarely will you find as much feeling behind the words, but this is a rare book. A live retelling of the raising of a sisters consciousness as she meets the people of the new world in Nicaragua, Black America, the USSR, the Bahamas, and other places currently or formerly dominated by imperialism. This is the type of book that can only come from someone engaged in struggle. This is the type of book that could never be written by someone on US tvs, or in US newspaper columns. In Miss Jordan day there was no black MSNBC hosts, no black NYT columnists or nothin but today we got black folks who spread the same nonsense as the white folks, either liberal or conservative anti-Black pro imperialist line.
June Jordan was da enemy not just for her Blackness but her knowing it was not her, or people who looked like her, that was societies problem but the ones doing her and her people harm. And she wouldn't let that go.
“This cross-eyed New Manliness of North America explains why the ostensible great threat is another Big Guy, the Soviet Union, and yet it is not the Big Guy's actual property that the United States will invade, it is not Soviet waters that the United States will mine. It is some other country, some small, some weak, some non-white country allegedly under Soviet influence that The New Men of the USA will choose to torture and destroy—rather than face another whiteman who just might kick his ass, a little bit. The New Men of the USA madly develop abstract systems for nuclear annihilation because that will mean that at least they didn't "lose" simply because nobody can win that showdown.
So I am glad,I am truly glad that I am not now, nor have i ever been, a whiteman.”

[Safra Ducreay · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a powerful book. Made me want to holler at times. We lost a true legend.

[Rita]

1985
This is the volume that Angela Davis quotes from about black English, in her book Blues legacies.
Perhaps it's only a single essay in the volume.