On the Record: Barbara Smith on Palestine, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich

On August 7th, writer Marina Magloire posted on the social media site X (formerly Twitter) that the Los Angeles Review of Books had just published “Moving Towards Life” (7 August 2024), her piece about June Jordan’s solidarity with the Palestinian people and their right to life and self-determination. A Caribbean-American bisexual poet, activist, educator, and teacher, Jordan’s commitment to naming and denouncing the Palestinian genocide was a political stance she held since the early 1980s through the end of her life, and it was according to Magloire, a defining part of her radical Black feminist politics.

Jordan’s position on Palestinian people and the Israeli government’s economic and political oppression and subordination of them across Gaza, the Golan Heights, and the West Bank became a line of demarcation within her Black feminist worldview. On one side stood Jordan, wholly and steadfastly committed to Palestinians’ human rights  against a settler colonial system that arose out of Zionism. On the other side, according to Magloire, were other Black feminists who were not as advanced politically on the issue of solidarity with Palestine as Jordan. 

It is this political landscape–dating back four decades–where Magloire guides her readers through Jordan’s political history as an advocate for Palestinians and the broken relationships she experienced when she believed other Black feminists such as Caribbean-American lesbian feminist Audre Lorde did not have the same political commitments about Palestine and its people.

Magloire writes:

“In the aftermath of Israel’s invasion of Lebanon in 1982, June Jordan and Audre Lorde had a falling out over the issue of Zionism. I’ve traced it across three archives, and it may be the most important story I’ve ever told. Read it, but more importantly, read June Jordan.”

Magloire’s piece offers extensive areas of research as it pertains to the archive that details the life, times, triumphs, and struggles of Jordan, and particularly, her rift with Lorde over her support of Jewish feminist author Adrienne Rich, and Rich’s Zionist stance. Not only does Magloire cite Lorde as a friend and fellow Black feminist comrade of Jordan’s who had ideological and political differences on the subject of Palestine, she names Black lesbian feminist, Barbara Smith, founding member of the Combahee River Collective, co-author of its Statement (1977), co-founder of Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, and an architect of Black Women’s Studies in the United States, as someone who was also antagonistic to Jordan’s allyship with Palestine.

While Jordan and Lorde can now only speak through their archives, given that both are deceased (Lorde in 1992 and Jordan in 2002), Smith is still alive. What is missing from Magloire’s piece is Smith’s perspective. Smith notes in the transcript of the interview below that she was not contacted by Magloire to offer her thoughts and experiences about the topic. Subsequently, scholar Charisse Burden-Stelly in a review of Magloire’s piece titled, “The June Jordan-Audre Lorde Dispute, Kamala Harris, and Palestine,” published in the Black Agenda  Report, also mentions Smith, noting that she, as well as Lorde and Rich later “…became anti-Zionists and supported Palestinian resistance.” Burden-Stelly also did not reach out to Smith. 

These articles raise questions about what a Black feminist care ethic is as it pertains to the archive. Aisha K. Finch offers one definition of Black feminism and the politics of care that states: “[a]t its core, care is ‘painstaking or watchful attention.” How can scholars pay “painstaking or watchful attention” to not only the richness of the archive but also to those with living memories? Where is the care and concern of “…centering Black life and living” – and in this case, the lives and memories of Black feminists – if they are living and are not asked about their experiences as breathing archives? Are we muting and silencing Black feminists if we only rely on the archives to speak, and do not offer (or even consider) the opportunity for Black feminists who are still with us to speak for themselves? 

How might Smith’s perspective and experiences have offered political and contextual nuance to Magloire’s article and Burden-Stelly’s review?   

In this interview, Smith speaks to her official biographers, author Joseph R. Fitzgerald, and Jaimee A. Swift, founder and executive director of Black Women Radicals, addressing the archive on Palestine, June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Adrienne Rich, from her point-of-view. 

The interview, recorded on August 22, 2024 and supplemented by follow-up  correspondence from Smith, has been edited for clarity and length.