June Jordan A Poem About My Rights Summary

June Jordan, a poet who is famous for her positive blaze of justice, writes poetry while advocating a command for universal equity, which appeals to people from various areas of the world. Jordan’s poetry speaks of American issues as well as international issues, such as African countries that are oppressed by their neighbouring countries. One of Jordans poems, ‘A Poem About My Rights’ serves as a resentment against the world’s oppression, however it also serves as a mandate for change. This essay aims to discuss the meaning of the poem, “A Poem About My Rights” as well as to analyse the ideologies which it contains, through giving a short background of the poet, June Jordan’s, life and the underlying story of the poem, as well as discussing the text in depth. A brief overview of Jordans technique in spoken poetry will also be noted.

June Jordan was born in 1936 in one of New York’s ghetto’s, Harlem, but was raised in the sophisticated city of Brooklyn (Parmar 55). As referred to in her book, Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood (2000), Jordan tells the reader how her father often beat her and her mother, and how he insisted on referring to her with the “masculine pronoun” (Jordan,

They had just come through the civil rights movement of the 1960s, however, discrimination against their culture was still very much alive and evident, and the efforts were not satisfactory in terms of what the Civil Rights Movement aspired to achieve (Klarman 12). African Americans suffered greatly during this era due to discrimination, and some communities totally excluded blacks. "If you're white, you’re all right" a black folk saying declared; "if you're brown stick around; if you're black, stay back.” (Martinez 26). This folk saying represents the underlying theme of Jordan’s ‘A Poem About My Rights’ - suppression and isolation of specific groups of