June Jordan Response

Soilder by June Jordan was a collective look at one woman’s unique childhood. I noticed that there were many important themes incorporated into the narrative, such as family abuse, violence, racism, religion, gender dynamics, gender norms being challenged, and lots of food and nature imagery. She recollects her childhood through the years, by focusing on moments, or even minute details concerning her memories. I enjoyed the “orange juice” section on pages 6-7 because of the fluent, beautiful style of writing. Another section was when Jordan describes her father’s roses by saying, “In my father’s garden, red ones, tangerine, and pink: Some of them grew their own, scraggly and not so pretty as they might hope to be unless you sniffed into the pollen-powder heart of every rose and you forgot about the crooked stem the thorns the sometimes bees the not so nice not regular see-through of the edgy leaves, then, then!—it could become so sweet a thing a rose just standing by itself” (224). This rose description could be a metaphor for how Jordan views her childhood; by being scared in a way by verbal and physical abuse (mostly by her father) but she still grew up to be an intelligent, sweet woman at heart, despite her complicated and difficult childhood.

When it comes to religious aspects in the text, I was shocked to read how strict her parents were when it came to religion and Christianity. She writes, “inside the Jordan household, nothing about religion was optional” (12) and this refers to the way that she grew up, starting off in Harlem. It reminds me how, throughout the whole memoir, religion and rules were not optional in the way her father scrutinized her every move, whether it came to boys, books, and school.

It is interesting how her father, Granville, forced her to read and memorize various texts such as the Bible and Shakespeare at such a young age. I noticed how his violence and vicious ritual beatings made June react in a combustive way. She even fought back at times, but he still persisted. There was one time I remember where June snuck a knife with her to bed, and that is the only way she could ward off her father’s violent night attacks. I was appalled near the end of the memoir when she finally told the cops about Granville’s abuse, and they just laughed it off, saying that she should, “‘try to be a good girl’” (235) and her father called her a “whore” when she puts on some red lipstick for a Halloween costume. In this section, towards the end of the book, the author contemplates on why he should think that she is a whore, her being only nine years old. The gender norms were so strict at that time, that even little girls were sexualized at such a young age. This section contradicts the earlier chapters where Granville treated his daughter like the son he never had. He does this in many ways, such as taking her fishing, teaching her how to defend herself and fight, making her memorize all the classic literature, etc. Once she was closer to hitting puberty, it seemed like her father treated her horribly by calling her a “whore” and this really disturbed be as a whole, as well as all the forced beatings for everything little thing she did wrong, which she clearly did not deserve.

One strange section I wanted to discuss was when June was obsessed with owning a gun (seen on pages 167-171). At the time, she was only a young girl, but her mother told her, “little girls [do] not want guns. Little girls [want] nice things, pretty things that would not hurt anybody” (168). This is ironic because in reality she never wanted pretty objects or girly toys to play with growing up. I noticed how much of a tomboy she was in the memoir, starting with beating up the neighborhood boys, playing marbles with them, ripping her paper dolls, assembling her own bike, and owning a (fake) gun. An intriguing scene was when her Grandmother actually buys her a gun and Jordan describes it as, “A .22 rifle with a really long blueblack barrel and a genuine wooden handle and a cynlidar that flicked out so you could load and unload bullet easily. So I picked it up and pointed it to the floor and I pulled the trigger. And a cork popped out. […] it was just a toy” (171). I assumed that June would have reacted with disappointment, but she ended up loving that gun. I noticed that the gun might allude to the beginning of the book where she explained her love for cowboys, and Wild West themed adventure novels at an early age, and the obsession with the gun could relate back to that. It could also be a way for her to “defend” herself against her father, hypothetically. Sort of a precaution, which lead to the action of secretly harboring a knife. This worked against her father’s middle-of-the-night routinely attacks.

Even June’s mother beat her, which was why Robin Hood Camp seemed like a safe haven away from all that family abuse. The visual imagery of the apple tree could represent the Garden of Eden, a beautiful utopia where June felt she could escape to, away from her parents, whom she never fully connected with. By staying up in the apple tree until her parents came to get her she thought, “now I was free. I was free! Nobody knew how to make me come down” (224). Her best friend Jodi eventually convinced her to come down, and she had to face her life once again.
It is unusual how distant her mother was towards her growing up. At first, June worshiped her, by savoring every moment she had with her. But later on, the mother herself becomes abusive. Anyone want to explain why this occurs? How did the mother change throughout the novel?