Amiri Baraka "Numbers, Letters" and June Jordan "Poem About My Rights"

When reading these two poems, I couldn't help drawing a comparison between the two.  In "Numbers, Letters" Baraka is asserting his identity as a black man.  Whereas in "Poem About My Rights" Jordan is asserting her identity as a black woman.  Both poems deal essentially deal with the same theme.  They are about finding who you are in a world that refuses to accept who you are.  And asserting your rights in a world where your rights are not recognized.  

The sad reality is that Baraka and Jordan wrote these poems twenty years apart.  And yet they both deal with an entire race being denied their individuality and their freedoms.  You can tell that Baraka was feeling the same things that Jordan was feeling (although her poem focuses on women's rights).  Both of these poems evolved out of frustration.  Baraka was frustrated that people would not recognize the history of his people and his ancestry.  He was proud of who he was and where he came from, yet others were blind to his heritage.  Jordan was frustrated that she, as a black woman, was not allowed to own her own body.  Her poem deals with rape and the violation of the human body.  She asserts in this poem that she is not allowed ownership over her own body because "[...] I am the wrong / sex the wrong age the wrong skin [...]" (8-9). Twenty years apart, Baraka and Jordan wrote about their frustrations and the injustices that were being committed against them.  How sad is it that after all of the struggle and the endless fighting, these things were still occurring.