This Unruly Witness

A collection of bold and tender writing on June Jordan’s multidimensional legacy as a poet, healer, and activist.

was curated for people who see love as a life force, who seek a community that can sustain us, who know that “we are the ones we have been waiting for.” Celebrating the life and legacy of the poet activist June Jordan, this collection illuminates why we need Jordan more than ever.

Featuring a foreword by Alexis Pauline Gumbs, an afterword from Imani Perry, essays, poems, letters, and interviews from internationally acclaimed poets and thinkers such as Angela Davis, Pratibha Parmar, Margo Okazawa-Rey, Naomi Shihab Nye, Afaa M. Weaver, E. Ethelbert Miller, andmany other people touched by Jordan’s work.

Author Biography

Becky Thompsonis a scholar, poet, activist, and author of poetry collectionsTo Speak in SaltandZero Is the Whole I Fall into at Night.

Reckonings: Contemporary Short Fiction by Native American Women.

, an assistant professor of women’s studies at Colgate University, is a qualitative researcher and body archivist studying Black girlhood and Black queer resistance.

is an artist-scholar who documents the lived experiences of Black youth and their communities, examining how Black art and creative practices subvert and reimagine Black life in the face of violence.