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June Jordan's Poem About My Rights '

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The poem, “Poem About My Rights”, establishes the angst portrayed June Jordan about the treatment of women of color. She shares stories of sexual harassment and how being a woman of the wrong skin and age can justify this act. She is an activist who thinks that being a woman and a woman of color should not affect the way a women is treated in society. June Jordan demonstrates anguish and hostility by her use of enjambment and repetition in “Poem About My Rights” to elucidate to the reader that the rights of a person should not be compromised by something he/she cannot or doesn’t want change.

In her poem, June Jordan uses enjambment to express that women cannot feel safe outside of their homes. In the first stanza of the poem it states, …show more content…

The this is demonstrated in the lines “I am the history of rape/I am the history of rejection of who I am/ I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of/myself/I am the history of battery of battery assault and limitless/ armies against whatever I want to do with my mind/ and my body…” The repetitions of “I am the history of” helps portray what the author has went through as a woman. She uses “I am the history of” to illustrate her pass struggles of what she had dealt with as a female within society. These lines help to manifest the absence of Junes rights and how she was taken advantage of because physical presents she doesn't want to change. This elicits by the reptions of “I am the history of”,that a woman cannot or isn’t allowed to be who they want to be because of all the challenges they …show more content…

With the repetition “I have been the wrong”, the author, June Jordan manifest how the “wrong skin” or “wrong nose” or the “wrong hair” or “wrong gender” can affect a person in the “wrong geographic.”This use of repetitions illuminates how aberration of not being a man and being a person of color can be a reason for being raped like she was. She uses “I am” to help the reader understand or feel how it is like to be in her shoes. She is establishes the labels what society has said to be the reasons her rape is justified.Even though the reader may not be a woman, they can still experience how this injustice she feels as a woman of color and connect more to what see has went through and been blamed for. She goes on to use more repetition in the poem,in the last stanza, which contributes to the idea of not being discriminated against because of something a person doesn’t want to change. This is shown in the lines “I am not the wrong: wrong is not my name/ My name is my own my own my own/ and I can’t tell you who the hell set things up like this/but I can tell you that from now on my own resistance/” This heightens the idea

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