improvisational possibilities of African-American
identity and survival.
Selected Bibliography
Barnes, D. H. “Movin’ On Up: The Madness of Mi-
gration in Toni Morison’s Jazz. In Toni Morrison’s
Fiction: Contemporary Criticism, edited by D.
Middleton, 283–296. New York: Garland, 1997.
Leonard, J. Review of Jazz. In Toni Morrison: Criti-
cal Perspectives Past and Present, edited by Henry
Louis Gates, Jr., and K. A. Appiah, 36–49. New
York: Amistad Press, 1993.
Mbalia, D. D. “Women Who Run with Wild: The
Need for Sisterhoods in Jazz.” Modern Fiction
Studies 39, no. 3 and 4 (1993): 623–646.
Rodrigues, Ralph. “Experiencing Jazz.” Modern Fic-
tion Studies 39, no. 3 and 4 (Fall/Winter 1993):
733–753.
Gloria L. Cronin
Jeffers, Lance (1919–1985)
Born in Fremont, Nebraska, in 1919, Lance Jef-
fers was raised by his grandfather in Stromberg,
Nebraska. When he was 10 years old, he moved to
San Francisco, California, to live with his mother
and stepfather. During World War II, Jeffers
served in the U.S. Army in Europe. After the war,
Jeffers attended Columbia University, where he
earned his bachelor of arts (cum laude) and mas-
ter of arts degrees. He taught at California State
University, Long Beach; Bowie State University;
and Howard University, where he was a part of
the Howard Poets and was associated with Dasein:
A Quarterly Journal in the Arts. From 1947 until
his death in 1985, Jeffers taught at North Carolina
State University.
Jeffers’s collections of poetry include My Black-
ness Is the Beauty of This Land (1970), When I
Know the Power of My Black Hand (1975), O Af-
rica, Where I Baked My Bread: Poems (1977), and
Grandsire: Poems (1979). The title poem of his first
published collection, which AMIRI BARAKA included
in BLACK FIRE, celebrates blackness in the tradition
of the writers of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, al-
though it was written more than a decade before
this movement began. In a pride-filled voice reso-
nant of such Black Arts writers as SARAH WEBSTER
FABIO, NIKKI GIOVANNI, and ETHERIDGE KNIGHT,
Jeffers’s speaker declares:My blackness is the beauty of this land,
my blackness,
Tender and strong, wounded and wise,
my blackness... (Jones and Neal, 272)
Although he also wrote fiction and criticism,
Jeffers saw poetry as a way of reclaiming a racial
self-knowledge. By combining “history and protest
and demand and rage” (King, 78) and celebrat-
ing the black experience, writers and poets would
discover the nature of African Americans. Jeffers
believed that America was the birthplace for the
“ultimate grandeur in black poetry” (78). Jeffers’s
only novel, Witherspoon (1983), focuses on the ef-
fort of a black minister to save the life of a con-
demned convict. Jeffers was interested in social
issues like the Holocaust, the Vietnam War, and
everyday racial injustices in America. Although he
was concerned with social and political issues, Jef-
fers also wrote personal poems, some dedicated to
his wife, Trellie.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Jones, LeRoi, and Larry Neal, eds. Black Fire: An An-
thology of Afro-American Writing. New York: Wil-
liam Morrow & Company, 1968.
King, Woodie, Jr., ed. The Forerunners: Black Poets in
America. Washington, D.C.: Howard University
Press, 1975.
Kim Hai Pearson
Brian JenningsJoans, Ted (1928–2003)
Born to riverboat entertainers in Cairo, Illinois
(though, despite the well-known myth, not on a
riverboat), on July 4, 1928, Joans, a poet, painter,
jazz musician, surrealist, griot, and self-proclaimed
nomad who has lived throughout Africa, Europe,
and Asia, was described by STEPHEN HENDERSON inJoans, Ted 275