BINARY BASHERS | AUDIO DOCUMENTARIES
June Jordan: Black Bisexuality, Poetry, and the Politics of Liberation
A Black bisexual poet, educator, and revolutionary thinker who refused to separate sexuality from racial justice, feminism, and the struggle for collective freedom.
Who Was June Jordan?
June Jordan (1936–2002) was a Black bisexual poet, essayist, educator, and activist whose writing challenged racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, and the boundaries imposed on identity.
Born in Harlem to Jamaican immigrant parents and raised in Brooklyn, Jordan developed a literary voice rooted in Black experience, political resistance, and the conviction that individual freedom could not exist apart from collective liberation.
Over a career spanning more than three decades, she published poetry, essays, fiction, children’s literature, and political commentary. Her work confronted the relationship between language and power while examining how race, gender, sexuality, and national identity influence the possibilities of belonging.
Unlike historical figures whose sexuality must be reconstructed through fragmented archives, Jordan openly acknowledged her bisexuality, making her an especially significant figure in Black bisexual literary and political history.
June Jordan’s Bisexuality: Identity, Desire, and Sexual Freedom
June Jordan did not treat bisexuality as a contradiction requiring explanation or apology. Her writing openly acknowledged attraction across genders while challenging the social and political structures that attempted to regulate sexuality.
Her bisexual identity existed alongside her commitments to Black liberation, feminism, and human rights. Rather than separating these experiences into competing categories, Jordan understood identity and political struggle as interconnected.
In her influential 1991 essay, A New Politics of Sexuality, Jordan examined sexuality, identity, and the political responsibilities of movements seeking liberation.
Her work challenged approaches to equality that demanded allegiance to a single identity while excluding people whose experiences crossed established boundaries.
For Jordan, sexual freedom was inseparable from the freedom to define oneself, resist oppression, and determine the conditions of one’s own life.
Why Is June Jordan Examined Through the Bi-Coded Framework in Binary Bashers?
Binary Bashers, an LGBTQ+ history audio documentary series produced by Embracing All of Me, explores June Jordan through its bi-coded historical framework, which examines documented attraction, intimacy, and relationships involving more than one gender.
Unlike figures whose intimate histories must be reconstructed through fragmented records, Jordan openly identified as bisexual and addressed sexuality in her own writing.
This distinction is important to the Binary Bashers methodology.
The bi-coded framework does not automatically assign modern identity labels to historical figures. Instead, it distinguishes documented identities and relationships from interpretations made through literature, correspondence, and historical archives.
For June Jordan, bisexuality is not merely an interpretation imposed by later historians. It is part of her documented self-understanding and public intellectual legacy.
Her inclusion in Binary Bashers therefore expands the framework beyond historical excavation to examine what happens when a person openly claims an identity that social and political institutions attempt to marginalize.
Through Jordan’s poetry, activism, and teaching, Binary Bashers explores the relationship between bisexual visibility, Black feminism, personal autonomy, and collective liberation.
Her story challenges the notion that freedom requires choosing between identities—and asks whether liberation can ever be complete when parts of the self must remain excluded.
June Jordan’s Poetry: Language, Power, and Poem About My Rights
For June Jordan, poetry was not simply an artistic form. It was a means of political intervention, public testimony, and personal self-definition.
Her 1978 work Poem About My Rights examines bodily autonomy, sexual violence, racism, gender discrimination, and international oppression. Moving between intimate experience and geopolitical conflict, Jordan challenges the structures that determine whose bodies, voices, and boundaries are respected.
The poem demonstrates a defining characteristic of her writing: the refusal to separate personal freedom from collective struggle.
Other significant works include Things That I Do in the Dark (1977), Passion (1980), Living Room (1985), and Naming Our Destiny (1989).
Together, these works established Jordan as an influential literary voice whose poetry addressed desire, identity, political violence, and the possibilities of human connection.
June Jordan’s Poetry for the People: Education as Liberation
June Jordan believed poetry belonged to everyone, not simply to academic institutions or literary elites.
At the University of California, Berkeley, she founded Poetry for the People, a program designed to make poetry accessible, community-centered, and politically engaged.
The program encouraged students from different backgrounds to use writing as a tool for self-expression, cultural understanding, and social change.
Jordan’s approach to teaching reflected the same principles that shaped her creative work: language could challenge authority, reveal injustice, and create new possibilities for human connection.
Her legacy continues through the writers, students, and educators influenced by her commitment to democratizing artistic expression.
June Jordan Binary Bashers Audio Transcript
Episode Appendix & Suggested Reading Guide
More Stories That Challenge the Binary
