From Booklist
An established voice on racism and feminism, Jordan offers a collection of essays that criticizes our reluctance as a nation and as individuals to examine our own moral stances even as we discuss the immorality of the terrorist attacks on the U.S. She declares that Americans are not hated because the nation is free and just, but because it fails to respect the self-determination of others. The collection includes a letter to a friend of murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl and several essays on a wide array of subjects, including reversals of affirmative action, breast cancer, rape, O. J. Simpson, racial and sexual identity, and bisexuality. All of the pieces are aimed at provoking readers to adapt a larger, more global perspective. Vanessa Bush
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Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle
"She remains a thinker and activist who 'insists upon complexity.' "


Book Description
A posthumous collection of the essays of June Jordan, noted for its "love of language" and "expression of social identity" (Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle) Some of Us Did Not Die brings together a rich sampling of the late poet June Jordan's prose writings. The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.


About the Author
June Jordan was Professor of African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley and was born in New York City in 1936. Her books of poetry include Haruko / Love Poems and Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems. She was also the author of five children's books, a novel, three plays, and five volumes of political essays, the most recent of which was Affirmative Acts. For more than ten years, she wrote a regular political column for The Progressive magazine. Her honors included a National Book Award nomination, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. June Jordan died in Berkeley, California on June 14, 2002.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A posthumous collection of the essays of June Jordan, noted for its "love of language" and "expression of social identity" (Reamy Jansen, San Francisco Chronicle) Some of Us Did Not Die brings together a rich sampling of the late poet June Jordan's prose writings. The essays in this collection, which include her last writings and span the length of her extraordinary career, reveal Jordan as an incisive analyst of the personal and public costs of remaining committed to the ideal and practice of democracy. Willing to venture into the most painful contradictions of American culture and politics, Jordan comes back with lyrical honesty, wit, and wide-ranging intelligence in these accounts of her reckoning with life as a teacher, poet, activist, and citizen.

About the Author:June Jordan was Professor of African American Studies at U.C. Berkeley and was born in New York City in 1936. Her books of poetry include Haruko / Love Poems and Naming Our Destiny: New and Selected Poems. She was also the author of five children's books, a novel, three plays, and five volumes of political essays, the most recent of which was Affirmative Acts. For more than ten years, she wrote a regular political column for The Progressive magazine. Her honors included a National Book Award nomination, a Rockefeller Foundation grant, and a National Association of Black Journalists Award. June Jordan died in Berkeley, California on June 14, 2002.

FROM THE CRITICS

Reamy Jansen - San Francisco Chronicle