A Journal for Jordan is a 2021 American drama film directed and co-produced by Denzel Washington from a screenplay written by Virgil Williams, based on the memoir A Journal for Jordan: A Story of Love and Honor by Dana Canedy. The film stars Michael B. Jordan (who also co-produced the film) and Chanté Adams in the lead roles, along with Jalon Christian, Robert Wisdom, and Tamara Tunie in supporting roles.
The title of the film is “A Journal for Jordan,” but like the book it is based on, the movie is really two journals, kept by both parents of a baby whose father would meet him only once before he was killed in Iraq. It is the story of an improbable romance between two very different people and the imperishable bond that they both wanted their son to understand.
New York Times reporter and editor Dana Canedy was pregnant when her fiancé, First Sgt. Charles Monroe King was deployed to Iraq. She gave him a journal and it became a solace for him, a safe place to connect with home at the end of the day. As he saw young men killed in action, he wrote more than 200 pages about what he had learned about life and about being a man, and about his dreams for his son. He covered everything from treating women with respect to not being ashamed to cry. “Crying can release a lot of pain and stress. It has nothing to do with your manhood.”
After King’s death, Canedy wrote a best-seller incorporating excerpts from the journal, to tell Jordan the story of his father and of their time together. Each chapter begins as a letter: “Dear Jordan.”
We first see Dana (Chanté Adams) at work, fiercely independent, angry at an editor who wants to add another reporter to her story and then annoyed when the colleague who is trying to be assigned to her story points out that her breast milk has leaked through to her blouse. She is still breast-feeding and it is past time to pump.