"I think I have come to a place where I'm able to feel more comfortable about being honest"
About this Quote
That "I think" matters: it softens the claim while refusing to apologize for it. June Jordan frames honesty not as a moral trophy but as a hard-won location, a "place" reached after weather, miles, and cost. The sentence carries the quiet drama of someone who knows that truth-telling is not just personal temperament; it's a political act with consequences.
Jordan wrote as a Black feminist poet and essayist in a culture that routinely punished candor from people like her by calling it anger, ingratitude, or threat. So "comfortable" lands with a double edge. It's not comfort-as-ease; it's comfort-as-capacity: the ability to stay inside one's own voice long enough to speak plainly without flinching at backlash. The line hints at the prior state without naming it: a life of calculated edits, strategic silences, the exhausting labor of translating yourself for audiences primed to misunderstand you.
The intent is self-accounting, but the subtext is communal. Jordan is talking about what it takes to survive as a witness: to say what happened, what you want, what you refuse, and to accept that honesty will rearrange relationships. The phrasing suggests growth without triumphalism. She's not declaring arrival; she's describing a threshold. In Jordan's work, that threshold is where the personal stops being merely confessional and becomes usable - a tool for solidarity, critique, and love that doesn't require self-erasure.
Jordan wrote as a Black feminist poet and essayist in a culture that routinely punished candor from people like her by calling it anger, ingratitude, or threat. So "comfortable" lands with a double edge. It's not comfort-as-ease; it's comfort-as-capacity: the ability to stay inside one's own voice long enough to speak plainly without flinching at backlash. The line hints at the prior state without naming it: a life of calculated edits, strategic silences, the exhausting labor of translating yourself for audiences primed to misunderstand you.
The intent is self-accounting, but the subtext is communal. Jordan is talking about what it takes to survive as a witness: to say what happened, what you want, what you refuse, and to accept that honesty will rearrange relationships. The phrasing suggests growth without triumphalism. She's not declaring arrival; she's describing a threshold. In Jordan's work, that threshold is where the personal stops being merely confessional and becomes usable - a tool for solidarity, critique, and love that doesn't require self-erasure.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
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