Judy Juanita, author of the novel “Virgin Soul,” in conversation with host Richard Wolinsky, recorded spring, 2013.
Judy Juanita is a poet, novelist and playwright. In her younger days, as Judy Hart, while at San Francisco State, she served as editor in chief of The Black Panther newspaper, and lived in one of the Black Panther safe houses in 1967. Along the way she came to know such figures as Bobby Seale and Huey Newton.
In 2013, her first novel, Virgin Soul, was published. It’s a fictionalized memoir of her life in the black student movement and with the Panthers. This interview, recorded recorded in the spring of 2013, goes into detail about her life during the Panther days, about the relationship of the book to actual history, and about Judy Juanita’s life after the Panthers.
Since 2013, Judy Juanita has continued to write and teach Her collection of essays, DeFacto Feminism: Essays Straight Outta Oakland was published in 2016, and she recently had a story published in the collection Oakland Noir. Judy Juanita recently completed a second novel.