“Body and soul, Black America reveals the extreme questions of contemporary life, questions of freedom and identity: How can I be who I am?”

Source: Black Studies: Bringing Back The Person (1969), p. 46

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June Jordan13

Poet, essayist, playwright, feminist and bisexual activist 1936–2002

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Context: Just to be is a blessing. Just to live is holy. And yet being alive is no answer to the problems of living. To be or not to be is not the question. The vital question is: how to be and how not to be?
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Context: Who am I to talk? That’s a fair question, and one which deserves a better answer than I can give you. … Come to think of it, who are you? Whoever you are, I sympathize with you. I sympathize with everybody; that’s what I get for being a candidate myself. Let them call us nonentities. Who cares? A nonenitiy can be just as famous as anybody else if enough people know about him.
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