Nothing Less Than Love. Selected Essays

'In political journalism that cuts like razors, in essays that blast the darkness of confusion with relentless light, in poetry that looks as closely into lilac buds as into death's mouth. she (June Jordan) has comforted, explained, described, wrestled with, taught and made us laugh out loud before we wept' - Toni MorrisonAn essential collection on race, power and the radical force of love from one of the twentieth century's most singular voices, newly rediscovered.
For June Jordan, writing was inseparable from the conditions of living. Across decades of work, her essays bear witness to the shifting landscapes of race, gender, power and resistance, tracing with clarity and urgency the forces that shaped life and global entanglements. In Nothing Less than Love, her prose is at once incisive and expansive, moving between the intimate and the political, the immediate and the historical.
Attentive to both systemic injustice and the textures of everyday life, Jordan interrogates language, challenges silence and insists on the necessity of truth to save us all. What emerges is not only critique, but a vision of love as discipline, as commitment, as a force capable of remaking both self and society. Elegant, unsparing, and deeply humane, this collection affirms Jordan's place as a writer of enduring power and reach.