A Place of Rage: A New Acquistion Available from Cuesta College Library

Submitted by Dr. Alisa Klinger, English Division, Cuesta College

This speech was delivered by Klinger at a CDSE-sponsored Women’s Herstory Month event at Cuesta College (March 15, 2005)

Circa 1990, I had the most important job of my life. It wasn’t a new job; I’d actually been doing it already for 20 years or so. It was one of those jobs where I had to work pretty much 7 days a week, days and nights, and even the occasional all-nighter. It didn’t pay the rent, let alone food, utilities, or anything else. But it was a really great job all the same because it let me think and read and meet and speak with interesting people. I had to write a lot too, but at least I would get good feedback. And I always got promoted year-after-year-after-year. You see, my job was being a student.

Because I was a student, I got to read the works of people like Alice Walker, June Jordan, and Angela Davis, and many, many other women who changed the world so that I could be a student circa 1990. I got to ask these women, these writers, activist, teachers, and poets questions. I got to invite them to events, and, unimaginably, they would come. They would come, they would always tell me, because I was a student who was inviting them.

Because I was a student, I got to stand out in the rain and watch so no one would trip over the extension cords that fed the mike that June Jordan speaks into during parts of Pratibha Parmar’s 1991 film A Place of Rage.

June Jordan was my teacher. She was my friend. Now, June had a lot of friends; pretty much every student and artist she ever worked with, but I was a really, really good friend. I was the kind of friend who listened to everything she said; the kind who wrote her letters; who read everything she wrote; the kind of friend who introduced her to others. Most importantly, I was the kind of friend who spread her words.

My gift for guarding those electrical cords was a copy of A Place of Rage. The film was screened for the first time at Cuesta College on March 15, 2005, when students, staff, and faculty joined together to celebrate Women’s Herstory Month.

The most important gift my teacher, my friend, June gave me though was the lesson of reciprocity. Reciprocity. She uses the word in the film. Reciprocity—the giving back—is the theme, the abiding spirit, of every course I teach. It is the first rubric, the first vocabulary word, my classes study. Then we spend all semester practicing reciprocity. It is, truth be told, the governing principle of my life.

When I last wrote June a letter (okay, it was a love letter), I told her that I would continue to be the friend who held the extension cords. I would make sure her voice, and voices like hers, would be amplified into the resounding message:
Rage + Creativity + Reciprocity = Social Change.

I’m glad June Jordan spoke at Arizona State University several years ago, where I was teaching at the time, because I was able to sit in the audience and listen. As I listened, I wrote my final love letter to her, the letter with the promise to share the equation:
Rage + Creativity + Reciprocity = Social Change.

June died of cancer in June 2002. I’m still keeping my promise to her, however, and sharing her gift to me. Please join me in celebrating June Jordan and Alice Walker and Angela Davis and Trinh T. Minh-ha and Rosa Parks and Fannie Lou Hamer and all the extraordinary women who raise us, teach us, and inspire us by checking A Place of Rage out from the Cuesta College Library.

The Cultural Diversity and Student Equity Committee funded this recent acquisition. For a descriptive list of videos about diversity available from the Cuesta College Library, see the CDSE’s website: http://academic.cuesta.edu/cultural/. If you would like to help organize Women’s Herstory Month 2006 activities, please contact one of the CDSE co-chairs: Bailey Drechsler, Donna Bower, and Clint Weirick.