June Jordan Quotes & Sayings

“Language is political. That's why you and me, my Brother and Sister, that's why we supposed to choke our natural self into the weird, lying, barbarous, unreal, white speech and writing habits that the schools lay down like holy law.”

“I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.”

“To tell the truth is to become beautiful, to begin to love yourself, value yourself. And that's political, in its most profound way.”

“Poetry is a political act because it involves telling the truth.”

“In the process of telling the truth about what you feel or what you see, each of us has to get in touch with himself or herself in a really deep, serious way.”

“I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest.”

“That attitude that fighting is probably not fair, but you have to defend yourself anyway and damage the enemy, has been profoundly consequential as far as my political activism goes.”

“We do not deride the fears of prospering white America. A nation of violence and private property has every reason to dread the violated and the deprived.”

“Consequently, most of us really exist at the mercy of other people's formulations of what's important.”

“Bisexuality means I am free and I am as likely to want to love a woman as I am likely to want to love a man, and what about that? Isn't that what freedom implies?”