BARBARA HOUSTON

I understand women's studies to be, in large part, an enterprise devoted to
helping women students say, "I am not wrong." What I mean by this claim
can be made clearer if we consider the poem by June Jordan ( 1980, pp.
86-89) from which the line "I am not wrong" is taken. What follows are ad-
ditional excerpts from Jordan's poem, which is entitled "Poem About My
Rights."

Even tonight and I need to take a walk and clear
my head about this poem about why I can't
go out without changing my clothes my shoes
my body posture my gender my identity my age
my status as a woman alone in the evening
alone on the streets/alone not being the point/
the point being that I can't do what I want
to do with my own body because I am the wrong
sex the wrong age the wrong skin and
suppose it was not here in the city but down on the beach/
or far into the woods and I wanted to go
there by myself thinking about God/or thinking
about children or thinking about the world/all of it
disclosed by the stars and the silence
I could not go and I could not think
and I could not
stay there
alone
as I need to be

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