New in print

​We're On: A June Jordan Reader
(Alice James Books, 2017)
Christoph Keller and Jan Heller Levi, Editors

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Life As Activism
(Litwin Books, 2014)
​Stacy Russo, Editor
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Kissing God Goodbye
(Weidle Press, Germany, 2013) English / German

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His Own Where
(Feminist Press, 2010)

Fifteen years after her death, this powerful collection includes selections from Jordan's poetry, essays, plays, letters, talks and more. Publishers Weekly named it one of the Best Books of 2017.

Praise for We're On:

"This book is not just a collection of fig-urative words; it is a tool for liberation." 
   -Aja Monet, Publishers Weekly 

"This book is the rainbow sign after all the flooding across America."
​   -E. Ethelbert Miller, New York Journal
                                           of Books 

"Doesn’t holding these pages light your mind with impossible bravery?"
   -Cornelius Eady

"More than ever, as Brecht’s ‘dark times’ close in on our public life and our aspirations for social justice, we need June Jordan’s astute and lyrical observations, her outraged humanism, her clear-eyed love."   
    -Marilyn Hacker 

Introduction by Rachel Eliza Griffiths

​Support your local bookstore by purchasing We're On at Indiebound. Also available though Amazon.com.
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This volume is a complete collection of June Jordan's columns for The Progressive, published between 1989 and 2001. Through her work, Jordan taught a concept of "life as activism," based on inclusiveness, consistency, honesty, and identification with the oppressed. The writings collected here can be read as a road map to such a life of activism. These columns provide a critical study of important issues from the end of the twentieth century, as well as a clear illustration of the intersections of many forms of injustice and oppression, celebrating a movement away from single-issue politics to a far-reaching activism. 

​Foreword by Angela Davis.

​Support your local bookstore by purchasing Life As Activism at Indiebound. Also available through Amazon.com.



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A beautiful bilingual edition of Jordan's entire 1997 volume of poetry, Kissing God Goodbye / Abschiedskuss für Gott, translated by Julia Sattler and Walter Grünzweig with students of the Technische Universität Dortmund, Germany. In  the spirit of Jordan's Poetry for the People, students and professors worked together on these translations.

Afterword (in German) by Julia Sattler and Walter Grünzweig

Purchase Abschiedskuss für Gott / Kissing God Goodbye













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His Own Where was one of the first novels for young readers written entirely in Black English; in 1971 it was named as one of The New York Times' Most Outstanding Books, placed on the American Library Association's list of Best Books, and nominated for the National Book Award. It tells the story of Buddy, a troubled 15-year-old boy, and Angela, whose angry parents accuse her of being "wild." When life falls apart for Buddy and Angela is attacked at home, they take action to create their own way of staying alive in Brooklyn.

Introduction by Sapphire.

​Support your local bookstore by purchasing His Own Where at IndieBound. Also available through Amazon.com.

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Directed by Desire
(Copper Canyon Press, 2005)
​Sara Miles and Jan Heller Levi, Editors
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Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan gathers the work from Jordan's ten books of poetry and includes 70 never-before-published poems are a tender, fierce, and innovative series that she wrote before her death.

As Adrienne Rich writes in her "Foreword": "June Jordan . . . wrote from her experience in a woman's body and a dark skin, though never solely 'as' or 'for.' Sharply critical of nationalism, separatism, chauvinism of all kinds, as tendencies toward narrowness and isolation, she was too aware of democracy's failures to embrace false integrations. Her poetic sensibility was kindred to Blake's scrutiny of innocence and experience; to Whitman's vision of sexual and social breadth; to Gwendolyn Brooks' and Romare Bearden's portrayals of ordinary black people's lives; to James Baldwin's expression of the bitter contradictions within the republic."


Read Adrienne Rich's foreword.

Support your local bookstore by purchasing​ Directed by Desire at IndieBound. Also available through Amazon.com.

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Soulscript
(Harlem Moon, 2004)

Soulscript: A Collection of Classic African American Poetry

Soulscript is a collection compiled by June Jordan "according to the dictates of the heart." Here, in the work of luminaries like Gwendolyn Brooks, Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Ishmael Reed, Claude McKay and Richard Wright--as well as in her own poems--Jordan's hopeful challenge brings cherished history into a common future.  

Introduction by Staceyann Chin

Support your local bookstore by purchasing​ soulscript at IndieBound. Also available through Amazon.com.