June Jordan's Poem About My Rights

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June Jordan once said, “I am Black and I am female and I am a mother and I am bisexual and I am a nationalist and I am an anti-nationalist. And I mean to be fully and freely all that I am” (Benston 751.) She was an activist in what she believed in, and she did not hold back in her writing. Jordan wrote about being a black woman during the civil rights era and how after hundreds of years, the black woman is still looked at as inferior to man. In the poem, “Poem about my Rights,” she makes a reference about being a woman during the civil rights time and about being a woman back in Africa. In the beginning, she says, “Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear / my head about this poem” (Jordan 1-2). She is making a reference to how deep this poem will be. Jordan knows that during this time she is going to cause people to think and see from a woman’s point of view and how women in America are treated differently. They are not treated as an equal to the men of the country. The speaker states, “ / I can’t go out without changing my clothes, my shoes, my body posture, my gender identity, my age, my status as a woman alone in the evening/ (Jordan…show more content…
She always stated that she was bisexual in her writings, and she spoke out against injustice. In Norman’s writing, he says that Jordan uses her own personal experiences against injustice to make a claim that there needs to be justice, not only in America, but in the world; he states, “Jordan’s determination and her writing focuses on her own identity which is being an immigrant, feminist, woman, and bisexual cause people of every background relate to her” (Norman). She makes people listen with her writing. She calls out the people who are the oppressors. It is like she is saying that she will not be subjective to what other people want her to be. She wants to be who she is and not be ashamed of

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