Moving Towards Life: An Editors’ Salon

Los Angeles Review of Books is thrilled to announce the second installment in our Editor’s Salon series! An exclusive for LARB members, Editors’ Salons offer a deeper look into some of the magazine’s most exciting new pieces through conversations between LARB’s own editors and a range of leading experts and voices in their fields. Don’t miss out on our next salon, Moving Towards Life, coming up on October 28 at 6 p.m. PST over Zoom.

Editors’ Salons are open to all members of the Los Angeles Review of Books. Join today for as little as $10 a month. LARB members: sign in to register!

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“Moving Towards Life” by Marina Magloire

“Lorde’s failure to identify with the Palestinian struggle over her personal connections with white women had heartbreaking implications for a solidarity movement in which Jordan often found herself alone, willing to be the only voice of critique in American cultural spaces overrun by Zionists.”

In her recent essay for LARB, “Moving Towards Life,” Atlanta-based scholar and archivist Marina Magloire explores how debates over Zionism and Palestine impacted the relationship between Black feminist writers and thinkers June Jordan and Audre Lorde. Digging deep into the women’s personal archives and correspondence, Magloire illustrates how Jordan, a vocal advocate for Palestine, often found herself lacking support from her fellow Black feminists—most notably Lorde. Magloire traces the repercussions of this dynamic to the present day, in which Lorde remains a highly celebrated activist and scholar, yet June Jordan is less present in the discourse—in large part due to her unwavering support for Palestine.

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Marina Magloire is the author of We Pursue Our Magic: A Spiritual History of Black Feminism (University of North Carolina Press, 2023), which traces the history of Black feminist thought in relation to Afro-diasporic religion. She will be joined in conversation by Medaya Ocher, LARB’s Editor in Chief.

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Featured images: K. Kendall. Audre Lorde, 1980. Flickr, CC BY 2.0. flickr.com. Accessed October 1, 2024. Image has been altered. 

June Jordan. The Poetry of Design, 1964. AAR, shop.aarme.org. Accessed October 1, 2024. Image has been altered.