She’ll get a street named for her in New Jersey, where she was from.
Janine was that rare human being whose identity transcended all the categories that defined her — poet, teacher, novelist, feminist, human-rights activist for prisoners and migrant farmworkers.
We knew each other from San Francisco. The last time I saw her was on the Lower East Side at the Bowery Ball Room in Manhattan, for a reading to celebrate a book of poems by migrant farmworkers, Estamos Aqui, which she had translated. One of her last messages to me arrived not long after. It was dated June 19, 2007, but could have been written yesterday.
She was a defiant one! Signe and I saw her once in Heidelberg at a poetry festival and she was breathing deep and spitting fire! How many of these voices refuse to go down without a fight!