June Jordan's essay "Thank You, America!" provides a narrative that can continue to resonate with many immigrants and children of immigrants today. In her essay, Jordan provides a detailed description of her parent's love and gratitude for America while providing a clear depiction of the many times America was cruel to her parents and family because they were black and immigrants. Her dueling description of her parents’ views of America’s greatness with her own perception of a harsher truth allows the reader to understand the tensions that often run within multi-generational immigrant families. Her essay also brings to light the added difficulty that comes with not only being black but being a black immigrant, as both of these identities have often brought on discrimination within the United States. It’s important to notice that Jordan’s essay was originally titled “For My Family: A Belated Tribute to a Legacy of Gifted Intelligence and Guts” but was published as “Thank you, America!”

June Jordan’s essay can be compared with Audre Lorde’s book Zami: A New Spelling of My Name in terms of its discussion of what growing up in an immigrant household looks like. Specifically, both Jordan’s parents and Lorde’s parents attempted to ignore the discrimination they faced due to the color of their skin by not talking about it. However, both Jordan and Lorde picked up on this discrimination. Additionally, Jordan writes about her parents with a great sense of fondness and love, even after describing the ways in which they gave America too much credit. Ultimately, the essay is a thank you to them. One can find parallels in this sense between Jordan and Lorde as Lorde writes in a similar fashion about her mother who was very strict when Lorde was growing up but ultimately provided Lorde with the strength she needed. June Jordan’s essay is both a powerful description of what many immigrants in the United States face along with the love and tensions that exist within the generations of immigrant families.