"OUGHTA BE A WOMAN"

“OUGHTA BE A WOMAN”

I first met her in songs by Sweet Honey in the Rock.  I remember one particular song that Bernice Johnson Reagon mentioned before they sang it.  “I asked June to write me a poem about my momma, and I think that she got it just about right.  Here’s the song:  “Oughta Be a Woman.”  The poem/song spoke about the burden of Black women as breadwinners/mommas/child care providers. Though it was written by and about Black women, it reminded me of my own mother and of all her sacrifices for me.  

The poet’s name was June Jordan, and I have read many of her works since encountering her in the Sweet Honey song.  She was born in Harlem in 1936, born to Jamaican immigrants.  Her father was demanding, but he kindled in her a love of literature.  He was not Black when he migrated to the States in the early part of the 20th century, but he automatically became Black in the eyes of the white cultural climate in the USA.  Her mother was a nurse, and her farther worked in the post office.   Her father also beat her and her mother.  She relates her story as a child in her book “Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood,” where she notes that she began writing poetry at age 7.  She entitled her book “Soldier,” because of a quote from her father:  There is a war in this country against colored people – I have to become a soldier in this war.”  He made June Jordan a soldier too.

Her essays and poetry are among the best that I have read. She was not only a soldier in the war against racism – she wrote and lived in the intersections between race, gender, and sexual orientation.  She wrote the best essay on Martin Luther King, Jr., that I have ever read:  “The Mountain and the Man Who Was Not God: An Essay on the Life and Ideas of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.”  She taught poetry and writing at many places:  her alma mater Barnard College, City College of NYC, Yale, Sarah Lawrence, and University of California Berkeley. Her final book was “Some of Us Did Not Die,” a collection of original essays and previously written essays, published after September 11, in which she wrote these words: “Once through the fires of September 11, it’s not easy to remember or recognize any power we continue to possess.  Understandably we shrivel and retreat into stricken consequences of that catastrophe. But, we have choices, and capitulation is only one of them.”  In re-reading that essay for this blog, it struck me how timely it is in today’s pandemic world, as we reach the first anniversary of that deadly plague.  

June Jordan died of breast cancer in 2002, but her powerful vision lives on in her words.  If you have not encountered her, go find her writing and be challenged and delighted and inspired by it.  Since it is Women’s History Month, I want to conclude with one of June Jordan’s poems about another powerful woman:  Fannie Lou Hamer, in which she catches Ms. Hamer’s life of hospitality and fearless activism:

1977: Poem for Mrs. Fannie Lou Hamer

You used to say, “June?

Honey when you come down here you

supposed to stay with me. Where

else?”

Meanin home

against the beer the shotguns and the

point of view of whitemen don’

never see Black anybodies without

some violent itch start up.

                                       The ones who   

said, “No Nigga’s Votin in This Town . . .

lessen it be feet first to the booth”   

Then jailed you   

beat you brutal   

bloody/battered/beat   

you blue beyond the feeling   

of the terrible

And failed to stop you.   

Only God could but He   

wouldn’t stop   

you

fortress from self-

pity

Humble as a woman anywhere   

I remember finding you inside the laundromat   

in Ruleville   

                  lion spine relaxed/hell   

                  what’s the point to courage   

                  when you washin clothes?   

But that took courage

                  just to sit there/target   

                  to the killers lookin   

                  for your singin face   

                  perspirey through the rinse   

                  and spin

and later   

you stood mighty in the door on James Street   

loud callin:

                  “BULLETS OR NO BULLETS!   

                  THE FOOD IS COOKED   

                  AN’ GETTIN COLD!”

We ate

A family tremulous but fortified

by turnips/okra/handpicked

like the lilies

filled to the very living   

full

one solid gospel

                        (sanctified)

one gospel

                (peace)

one full Black lily   

luminescent   

in a homemade field   

of love