<\/p>\n This entry is the first by guest author A<\/p>\n <\/strong>lexis Pauline Gumbs, Phd. \u00a0Alexis is a queer black troublemaker, a black feminist space cadet time-traveler and an inspired embodiment of love. She is the founder of the Eternal Summer of the Black Feminist Mind Planetary Community School and the co-creator of the Mobile Homecoming Project: An Experiential Archive Amplifying Generations of Queer Black Brilliance. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/div>\n Black women\u2019s geographies and poetics challenge us to stay human by invoking how black spaces and places are integral to our planetary and local geographic stories and how the questions of seeable human differences puts spatial and philosophical demands on geography. \u00a0These demands site the struggle between black women\u2019s geographies and geographic domination, suggesting that more humanly workable geographies are continually being lived, expressed, and imagined.<\/em><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n Site 1<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n The Bottom of the Barrel<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n <\/strong>When June Jordan imagined \u201cSkyrise for Harlem\u201d the architectural plan that will be the model for this ritual of recitation and resituation, she was scraping the bottom of the barrel. \u00a0\u00a0After witnessing the Harlem riots in 1964, June Jordan abruptly found out that she was a newly single mother. She also offers frankly in a reflection in her first collection of essays, Civil Wars, \u00a0\u201cThere was no money. \u00a0Those days I didn\u2019t eat.\u201d \u00a0Her son Christopher had to stay with her parents because she could not feed him. Sometimes friends dropped off milk and eggs and scotch and cigarettes. \u00a0The money that she eventually got from selling her article about the architectural plan \u201cSkyrise for Harlem\u201d a plan in collaboration with her close friend R. Buckminster Fuller, was the only money that she had. \u00a0On December 24th 1964 the money finally came and she was able to get Christopher back and assemple a semblance of Christmas. \u00a0\u00a0There was no money. \u00a0\u00a0Those days I did not eat. \u00a0\u00a0Some of June Jordan\u2019s cousins have gone on record saying June Jordan was dramatic. \u00a0She exaggerated. \u00a0But I have seen the records of June Jordan\u2019s phone getting cut off, I have seen the medical records that show the impact of poverty on her physical and psychological health. \u00a0And knowing that for June Jordan who loved and admired her parents, but who also experienced abuse growing up in their home, I trust that it was really dire circumstances that had her make the difficult choice to send her son to live with her parents at this particularly dire economic time in her writing life.<\/span><\/p>\n This is important to state because for those of us who know anything about her June Jordan is a miracle. \u00a0It is as if her life and her smile were sent out of the sky specifically to inspire us. \u00a0She was a poet, skilled to create a language for living that contradicted the logic of global capitalism that institutionalized itself during her lifetime, but she was an architect because she built an ethical life out of difficult decisions everyday. \u00a0Skyrise for Harlem, came from the very bottom of the barrel, the place where as womanist process theologian Monica Coleman and many others say, we make a way out of no way. \u00a0Like Jordan\u2019s tangible architectural work and blueprints, Jordan\u2019s work as an architect, building something out of space filled by an empty belly is forgotten. \u00a0As my partner Julia and I have travelled the country interviewing, honoring and documenting the work of innovated black queer feminist elders we have found that some of our genius elders have been couch surfing past middle age, face homelessness and worry daily about where they will house the priceless vessels of brilliance that are their bodies, and where they will keep the priceless boxes of archival materials they have saved from a life deciding to build something bigger than what capitalism would imply.<\/span><\/p>\n So the bottom of the barrel is a place, and I say it is a site of intervention. \u00a0What does an architect who is accountable to the bottom of the barrel, who can give an account of what that rock and hard place space of choosing feels like, what does that architect imagine and build? \u00a0And what happens to those plans in the context of capitalism? \u00a0If you were to flip through the April 1965 issue of Esquire Magazine, the source of just in time money that allowed June Jordan to have Christopher home by Christmas, where June Jordan\u2019s article and the plans for Skyrise for Harlem appear you would see the most expensive cars and liquor and clothing advertised. \u00a0\u00a0Not bottom of the barrel but top shelf, enticing the imagined audience of white men with disposable wealth. \u00a0And maybe if you thought about the difference between the audience for these ads and the bottom of the barrel Harlem existence June Jordan was navigating as single mother you could predict but probably still never understand the violence of the editorial revisions the staff of Esquire made to her piece. \u00a0June Jordan created a vision and an article called \u201cSkyrise for Harlem\u201d but here between the top-shelf scotch and the pall mall cigarettes and the newest Pontiac and the Italian leather shoes you will see a title June Jordan never approved, but consented to when she signed the paper that gave her the money to have Christopher home by Christmas. \u00a0The bottom of the barrel. \u00a0If you look you will see the title, not Skyrise for Harlem, but Instant Slum Clearance.<\/span><\/p>\n This instant. \u00a0We were never meant to survive. \u00a0Because that is what happens at the bottom of the barrel. \u00a0\u00a0You don\u2019t get a say. \u00a0\u00a0But this triumph. \u00a0On the bottom of the barrel what Katherine McKittrick calls a more humanly workable definition of life is being created. \u00a0\u00a0So visionary and transformative and dangerous to the unsustainable sponsors of Esquire magazine that it must be made into a joke. \u00a0\u00a0This is what happens at the bottom of the barrel the unglamorous and frightening space where housing is a basic need, where it is obvious how love and life and imagine suffer how home is impossible when whether you have water depends not on whether you go pump some, but on whether you can convince an absentee landlord to imagine you as human. \u00a0June Jordan published a plan for Harlem generated from and accountable to the bottom of the barrel which is a place where we should not have to live, but is also an ethical space, a space of knowledge, a space of clarity about what life requires. \u00a0\u00a0So as architects of discourse and as builders of a movement, what do we know about the bottom of the barrel? \u00a0How is that place of knowledge, clarity, injustice and violence reflected in our work? \u00a0What everyday choices would we make if we were accountable to that place?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n >via:\u00a0http:\/\/pluraletantum.com\/2012\/03\/21\/june-jordan-and-a-black-feminist-poetics-of-architecture-site-1\/<\/a><\/p>\n __________________________<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n 1936\u20132002<\/span><\/p>\n Photo by Gwen Phillips<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 1955, Jordan married Michael Meyer, a white Columbia University student. Interracial marriages faced considerable opposition at the time, and Jordan and her husband divorced after ten and a half years, leaving Jordan to support their son. At about the same time, Jordan’s career began to take off. First working in film, Jordan was soon exploring the impact of environment and architecture on the lives of low-income Black families, working with the architect Buckmeister Fuller. In 1966 she began teaching at the City College of the City University of New York, and in 1969 she published her first book of poetry,\u00a0Who Look at Me<\/em>. Aimed at young readers, the book was originally a project of Langston Hughes.\u00a0Who Look at Me<\/em>\u00a0uses Black English poetry to describe several paintings of black Americans, prints of which are included in the book. Jordan felt strongly about the use of Black English, seeing it as a way to keep black community and culture alive. She encouraged black youngsters to write in that idiom through her writing workshops for black and Puerto Rican children. With Terri Bush, she edited a collection of her young pupils’ writings,\u00a0The Voice of the Children<\/em>; she also edited the enormously popular and influentialSoulscript: Afro-American Poetry\u00a0<\/em>(1970; reprinted 2004).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Jordan\u2019s concern for children, especially African-American children, always stood out in her work. Her 1971 novel for young adults,\u00a0His Own Where<\/em>, also written in Black English, explores Jordan\u2019s interests in environmental design. Sixteen-year-old Buddy, and his younger girlfriend, Angela, try to create a world of their own in an abandoned house near a cemetery. Jordan explained her feelings about the book to De Veaux: “Buddy acts, he moves. He is the man I believe in, the man who will come to lead his people into a new community.” Jordan’s other work for young people includes\u00a0Dry Victories\u00a0<\/em>(1972),\u00a0New Life: New Room\u00a0<\/em>(1975), and\u00a0Kimako’s Story\u00a0<\/em>(1981),<\/em>\u00a0inspired by the young daughter of Jordan’s friend, fellow writer Alice Walker.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Although Jordan has not written specifically for young readers since\u00a0Kimako’s Story<\/em>, she explores her own formative years in\u00a0Soldier: A Poet’s Childhood\u00a0<\/em>(2000). Jordan\u2019s searing description of learning to be a “good little soldier” under the severe tutelage of her father who drove her to be strong and smart, to appreciate beauty, but often at the cost of a beating, is told in the guileless voice of a child. Jordan explained her goal for the book in an interview with Elizabeth Farnsworth of\u00a0NewsHour:\u00a0<\/em>“I wanted to honor my father, first of all, and secondly, I wanted people to pay attention to a little girl who is gifted intellectually and creative, and to see that there’s a complexity here that we may otherwise not be prepared to acknowledge or even search for, let alone encourage, and to understand that this is an okay story\u2026a story, I think, with a happy outcome.” Jordan further commented in an\u00a0Essence<\/em>\u00a0interview: “My father was very intense, passionate and over-the-top. He was my hero and my tyrant.\u201d\u00a0Booklist<\/em>\u00a0critic Stephanie Zvirin observed that\u00a0Soldier,\u00a0<\/em>written \u201cin the flowing language of a prose poem\u201d is “a haunting coming-of-age memoir.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Throughout her long career, Jordan gained considerable renown as both an essayist and political writer, penning a regular column for the\u00a0Progressive<\/em>.\u00a0<\/em>In\u00a0Some of Us Did Not Die: New and Selected Essays of June Jordan\u00a0<\/em>(2002), published the same year of the author’s death from breast cancer, Jordan presents thirty-two previously published essays as well as eight new tracts. The essays examine a wide range of topics, from sexism, racism, and Black English to trips the author made to various places, the decline of the U.S. educational system, and the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, DC, on September 11, 2001. Writing for\u00a0Lambda Book Report<\/em>, Samiya A. Bashir called the new essays “fiery,” adding that the collection provides “evidence of\u2026[Jordan\u2019s] indomitable spirit.” Noting that Jordan writes about homosexuality as well as her own bisexuality, Bashir went on, “In the essay, ‘A Couple of Words on Behalf of Sex (Itself),’ Jordan moved beyond the ethereal beauty of love in defense of the concrete beauty of sexual experience and desire. In typically humorous style she decried the increasing demonization of sexuality and sexual desire.” A\u00a0Kirkus Reviews<\/em>\u00a0contributor wrote, “Some of the stronger pieces here\u2026address the vast complex of injustice that is contemporary American life.” An edition of Jordan\u2019s collected poems was also published posthumously. That volume,\u00a0Directed by Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan<\/em>\u00a0(2005), includes various poems published from 1969 through 2001, many of which discuss her battle with cancer. Janet St. John, writing in\u00a0Booklist<\/em>, declared the book “a must-read for those wanting to learn and be transformed by Jordan’s opinions and impressions.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n In an obituary for the\u00a0San Francisco Chronicle<\/em>, Annie Nakao wrote that the author “left a mountain of literary and political works.” Nakao added: “As I discovered soon enough when I picked up a June Jordan work, its contents could shout, caress, enrage. The thing it never did was leave you unengaged.” In an article of appreciation in the\u00a0Los Angeles Times<\/em>\u00a0following the author’s death, Lynell George explained how the author “spent her life stitching together the personal and political so the seams didn’t show.” George further stated that throughout her life the author “continued to publish across the map, swinging form to form as the occasion or topic demanded. Through poetry, essays, plays, journalism, even children’s literature, she engaged such topics as race, class, sexuality, capitalism, single motherhood and liberation struggles around the globe.” However, Jordan perhaps understood her own legacy best. In an interview with\u00a0Alternative Radio\u00a0<\/em>before her death, Jordan was asked about the role of the poet in society. Jordan replied: “The role of the poet, beginning with my own childhood experience, is to deserve the trust of people who know that what you do is work with words.” She continued: “Always to be as honest as possible and to be as careful about the trust invested in you as you possibly can. Then the task of a poet of color, a black poet, as a people hated and despised, is to rally the spirit of your folks\u2026I have to get myself together and figure out an angle, a perspective, that is an offering, that other folks can use to pick themselves up, to rally and to continue or, even better, to jump higher, to reach more extensively in solidarity with even more varieties of people to accomplish something. I feel that it’s a spirit task.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n![\"June-Jordan-Place-of-Rage-site\"](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/June-Jordan-Place-of-Rage-site.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nJUNE JORDAN AND <\/span><\/h2>\n
A BLACK FEMINIST POETICS <\/span><\/h2>\n
OF ARCHITECTURE \/\/ SITE\u00a01<\/span><\/h2>\n
\n<\/strong>-Katherine McKittrick in\u00a0<\/strong>Demonic Grounds: Black Women and the Cartographies of Struggle<\/span><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/pluraletantum.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/03\/hsp.jpg?w=300&h=389\" "\\"hsp\\"")
<\/span><\/a><\/span>Skyrise for Harlem<\/span><\/div>\n
\nJune Jordan<\/span><\/h1>\n<\/div>\n![\"Photo](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/09\/june-jordan.jpg\")
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\nOne of the most widely-published and highly-acclaimed African American writers of her generation, poet, playwright and essayist June Jordan was also known for her fierce commitment to human rights and progressive political agenda. Over a career that produced twenty-seven volumes of poems, essays, libretti, and work for children, Jordan engaged the fundamental struggles of her era: over civil rights, women\u2019s rights, and sexual freedom. A prolific writer across genres, Jordan\u2019s poetry is known for its immediacy and accessibility as well as its interest in identity and the representation of personal, lived experience\u2014her poetry is often deeply autobiographical; Jordan\u2019s work can also be overtly political and often displays a radical, globalized notion of solidarity amongst the world\u2019s marginalized and oppressed. In volumes like\u00a0Some Changes\u00a0<\/em>(1971),\u00a0Living Room\u00a0<\/em>(1985) and\u00a0Talking Back to God\u00a0<\/em>(1997), Jordan uses conversational, often vernacular English to address topics ranging from family, bisexuality, political oppression, African American identity and racial inequality, and memory. Regarded as one of the key figures in the mid-century African American social, political and artistic milieu, Jordan also taught at many of the country\u2019s most prestigious universities including Yale, State University of New York-Stony Brook, and the University of California-Berkley.<\/span>
\nBorn July 9, 1936, in Harlem, New York, Jordan had a difficult childhood and an especially fraught relationship with her father. Her parents were both Jamaican immigrants and, she recalled in\u00a0Civil Wars: Selected Essays, 1963-80<\/em>\u00a0(1981), “for a long while during childhood I was relatively small, short, and, in some other ways, a target for bully abuse. In fact, my father was the first regular bully in my life.” But Jordan also has positive memories of her childhood and it was during her early years that she began to write. Though becoming a poet \u201cdid not compute\u201d for her parents, they did send the teen-aged Jordan to prep schools where she was the only black student. Her teachers encouraged her interest in poetry, but did not introduce her to the work of any black poets. After high school Jordan enrolled in Barnard College in New York City. Though she enjoyed some of her classes and admired many of the people she met, she felt fundamentally at odds with the predominately white, male curriculum and left Barnard without graduating.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n