Producing Their Own Literature
June Jordan and the Pedagogical Politics of Literary Anthologies
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 11271807 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Danica Savonick (SUNY Cortland, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 45 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Pages | 25-43 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | MELUS Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0163-755X • E-ISSN: 1946-3170 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/melus/mlaa034 |
| OpenAlex | W3086093289 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 14 |
In 2004, two years after June Jordan passed away, Random House issued a reprint of her classic edited collection Soulscript: Afro-American Poetry, described on the back cover as “a poignant, panoramic collection of poetry from some of the most eloquent voices in the art.” First published in 1970, Soulscript responded to what Jordan felt was Clarence Major’s excessive leniency in editing The New Black Poetry (1969) and the sense she shared with Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones) that black literary anthologies had been constrained by an imperative to protest and selected for their “sociological” rather than “literary” interest (Jordan, Letter to Milton Meltzer).1 Her aim, in contrast, was “to demonstrate the existing literature of American black poets,” emphasizing the literary and aesthetic value of the poems she selected. On publication, Soulscript was met with critical approbation, lauded as “an exemplary, tasteful anthology” (Review) and “an enjoyable volume of thought-provoking reading” (Tarver). Reviewers praised these poems as “the best, represent[ing] a striking convergence of the vocabulary of individual recognitions and historical immediacy” (Review). Since then, Soulscript has become a foundational anthology of African American poetry.
Art · Art history · Immediacy · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literature · Poetry · Politics · Reading (process) · Value (mathematics) · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Literature: history, themes, analysis · Philosophy · Poetry Analysis and Criticism
A Press of Our Own Kitchen Table
The Intimate Distance of Desire
You can't see the trees for the school
June Jordan and the New Black Intellectuals
Practicing Love
Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women
Practicing Love
The Love Poetry of June Jordan
The Problem of Anthologies, or Making the Dead Wince
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,67 |
| Citation span | 2023 - 2025 (3) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 2 |