Soldier

By June Jordan

Subjects: Biography, American poets -, Reading Level-Grade 12, Families, Family, Childhood and youth, American Poets, African American poets, African American families, Afro-American poets -, New York Times reviewed, Family relationships, LGBTQ biography and memoir, Reading Level-Grade 11, Reading Level-Grade 10

Description: A profoundly moving childhood memoir by a noted poet, essayist, teacher, and journalist. "SHORTA not uncommon story is here captured with astonishing beauty" the childhood of a gifted daughter whose immigrant parents must struggle in order to provide her with the educational and social opportunities not available to them or, for that matter, to most blacks of her generation. In vivid prose that re-creates the heady impressions of youth, June Jordan takes us to the Harlem and Brooklyn neighborhoods where she lived and out into the larger landscape of her burgeoning imagination. Exploring the nature of memory, writing, and familial as well as social responsibility, Jordan re-creates the world in which her identity as a social and artistic revolutionary was forged.