Soldier: A Poet's Childhood

A profoundly moving coming-of-age memoir that reveals the indomitable spirit in the face of prejudice and abuse that gave rise to one of the most widely acclaimed Black American writers of her generation

A Penguin Classic

June Jordan’s father wanted a son—and since he got a daughter instead, he made her into a soldier. The gifted child of Jamaican immigrants, Jordan learned early on to harden herself not only to the humiliations of racism, sexism, and poverty in 1940s New York, but also to her mother’s own internal struggles and her father’s bouts of violence. “There was a war on against colored people, against poor people,” Jordan writes of the battleground of her youth. Yet despite the tumultuous episodes that marked her childhood, she preserves a deep capacity for love, wonder, and beauty. As she poignantly explores the nature of memory, imagination, and familial responsibility as well as social responsibility, Jordan re-creates the vivid world in which her identity as a social and artistic revolutionary was forged.