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Works Cited
Thomas, Lorenzo, and Lorna Raven Wheeler. "The Poetry Of Sanchez." Masterplots II: African American
Literature, Revised Edition (2008): 1-5. Literary Reference Center Plus. Web. 12 Mar. 2013.
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The Poetry of Sanchez
Sonia Sanchez
Given Name: Wilsonia Benita Driver
Born: September 9, 1934; Birmingham, Alabama
Quick Reference
First published:Homecoming, 1969; We a BaddDDD People, 1970; A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical
Women, 1973; Love Poems, 1973; I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems, 1978; Homegirls and
Handgrenades, 1984; Under a Soprano Sky, 1987; Wounded in the House of a Friend, 1995; Does Your
House Have Lions? 1997; Like the Singing Coming Off of Drums: Love Poems, 1998; Shake Loose My Skin:
New and Selected Poems, 1999
Type of work: Poetry
Street Lit
Sonia Sanchez’s widely acclaimed poetry might best be called “Street Lit,” a relatively new term for a literary
genre with a rich past in African American letters. Sanchez is considered one of the chief shapers of “Street
Lit” more specifically and of African American poetry more generally. In the Heath Anthology of American
Literature, the editors suggest that to examine Sanchez’s pieces, one must forget traditional definitions of
poetry. The editors go on to note that Sanchez’s work is intentionally “anti-intellectual” and opposed to
academia, aimed at challenging readers to formulate their own conceptions about what is or is not
aesthetically pleasing. Just as W. E. B. Du Bois claimed that all art is, or should be, political, Sanchez
unabashedly fuses art and issues of social justice so seamlessly in her poetry that it seems that art must be
political to matter. That said, to call Sanchez a political poet would be to misunderstand her deep contribution
to American arts and letters that moves well beyond what one may consider political. Just as the great poets
who preceded her, Sanchez writes poems that move well beyond the personal and the political to resonate
universally.
One of Sanchez’s major themes is not merely survival but the will to renewal; the personal and political are
often combined in Sanchez’s poems, one dimension of experience illuminating the other. This poetry is also
often public poetry, in the sense that Sanchez crafts orations intended to address and awaken public
awareness of issues that range from international politics to familial relationships and personal
consciousness of the self, particularly the female self. While not usually bookish in its allusions, her poetry
can also deftly build on history and mythology as useful reflections of the personal drama that is the life of
every human being. Sanchez also draws quite effectively on the legacy of African American song, both
secular and spiritual, and dynamically extends the African American literary tradition. As did Frances Harper
and Paul Laurence Dunbar, Sanchez addresses the African American community and creates what Harper
refers to as “songs for the people”; like Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Margaret Walker,
Sanchez has mastered twentieth century modernism while remaining sensitive to the intricacies and
expressive nuances of African American vernacular.
Sanchez’s poetry has received recognitions such as the 1984 Lucretia Mott Award, the Before Columbus
Foundation’s American Book Award, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, 1998
nominations for both the National Book Critics Circle and the National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) Image Awards, the 2001 Robert Frost medal in poetry and the 2000 Barnard New
Women Poet’s Prize, to name a few. She has acquired an enormous popular readership in the African
American community.
Born September 9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama, Sanchez was only a child when her mother, Lena Jones
Driver, died. For the next several years, she and her sister were cared for by various relatives, and the
emotional dislocation caused her to develop a stutter that she compensated for by writing poems. Her father,
Wilson L. Driver, moved the girls to New York’s Harlem community in 1943. The poet attended public
schools there and, in 1955, graduated with a degree in political science from Hunter College of the City
University of New York. She spent the next year studying poetry with the respected black poet Louise Bogan
at New York University.
Suspicion of the Mainstream
After college, Sanchez was active in the drive for desegregation as a member of the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE), but she was also skeptical of mainstream American culture and its materialistic focus. In
Sanchez’s view, integration did not include abandoning what was vital in African American culture.
Homecoming, her first book, includes a “Memorial” for the popular female singing group The Supremes: “cuz
they dead,” having changed their rhythm-and-blues performance style and “bleached out/ their blk/ness” in
order to appeal to a white, mainstream audience. Consistent with this outlook, Sanchez was closely involved
with efforts to establish black studies in the college curriculum during the 1960’s, working with others such
as playwrights Ed Bullins and Marvin X. She began her own teaching career at the Downtown Community
School and at San Francisco State College. She was also to teach at the University of Pittsburgh, Rutgers
University, City College of the City University of New York, and the University of Massachusetts. In 1977,
Sanchez was appointed a professor of English and women’s studies at Temple University in Philadelphia as
the first presidential fellow. Sanchez held the Laura Carnell Chair in English at Temple University until she
retired in 1999. Sanchez, like literary foremother Frances E. W. Harper, continues to present her poetry
internationally and has produced a compact disc of her poems put to music titled Full Moon of Sonia (2004).
Sanchez’s commitment to social change is evident throughout her poetic work (which includes plays and
poetic prose that could also be called vignettes or short stories), but her concerns expand over time from the
specific issues of the American Civil Rights movement to global interest in the relief of racial and political
oppression. The poet’s frequent travels to Europe, Cuba, Central America, and China have brought her into
personal contact with similarly committed writers whose works address the same concerns. Sanchez is
fluent in Spanish, and her work reveals the influence of poets such as the Chilean Pablo Neruda and a
collaborator of Langston Hughes, Afro-Cuban poet Nicolás Guillén.
Sanchez’s published work is a chronicle of her own progress from Westernized values to what she has
called a “blacker” point of view. “Each of us,” she wrote in We Be Word Sorcerers (1973), “was born a
Negro with no knowledge of himself or history. Each one of us was the finished product of an American
dream, nightmarish in concept and execution. Each one of us has survived to begin our journey toward
Blackness.” This cultural nationalist stance is evident in early poems such as “Listen to Big Black at S.F.
State,” from the collection We A BaddDDD People. The poem exemplifies Sanchez’s characteristic and
effective strategy: Protest against racism leads to a call for self-realization, both personal and communal. In
lines that sometimes demonstrate her use of onomatopoeic imitation of the sound of conga drums, Sanchez
lauds the jazz drummer Big Black’s celebration of African culture and calls for “no mo meetings/ where u talk
bout/ whitey. the cracker/ who done u wrong.” Such angry recrimination should, the poet feels, be replaced
with racial self-affirmation and the moral regeneration of the African American community, which will be
made evident by “just a sound of drums./ the sonnnnnNNg of chiefs/ pouren outa our blk/ sections.” This
poem also vividly exhibits Sanchez’s reshaping of lines and standard spelling to approximate the rhythms
and sounds of urban African American speech. In an analogy to the way the African “talking drum” mimics
the sound of West African tonal languages, Sanchez attempts to make printed words visually echo her sung
and spoken language.
Poetic Performance
Sanchez’s brilliant recitation of her own work spurred its popularity. A Sun Lady for All Seasons, an album
issued by Folkways Records in 1971, reveals that Sanchez’s oral presentation of these early poems blends
chanting and sung passages that are akin to the modulations of both blues and spirituals. She also, in an
avant-garde manner, sometimes includes jazz scat singing of nonlexical syllables with dramatic shrieks of
agony and keening cries.
Sanchez’s Full Moon of Sonia (2004) is a compelling selection of her poetry accompanied by music. On this
album, Sanchez uses hip-hop, rap, Afro-Cuban music, jazz, and rhythm and blues, illustrating her deep
contribution to contemporary music as well as her continued relevance to African American culture. One
particularly compelling recitation/song is “Under a Soprano Sky,” inflected with a simple piano and a single
horn. In this piece, Sanchez ponders the nature of poetry and where she fits into it. Unlike some of the more
raucous and thumping presentations, “Under a Soprano Sky” offers listeners a quiet, almost meditative
song. In “For Langston/I’ve Known Rivers,” Sanchez offers a slow funk rendition of her poem that is
underscored by a recitation of Hughes’s classic poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” first published in the
popular Harlem Renaissance journal The Crisis in 1921. This pastiche, or mixing, between Sanchez and her
literary predecessor serves to both honor Hughes and engage with him, as Sanchez presents the mix in a
flavor not at all foreign to Hughes, who was one of the penultimate blues poets. Another selection titled
“TuPac” is delivered as a slow, funk-infused rap: a praise-poem/elegy to the slain young musician and poet
Tupac Shakur.
Not all Sanchez’s work is written in open or speech-inflected forms. Love Poems and I’ve Been a Woman:
New and Selected Poems present many examples of Sanchez’s handling of the Japanese haiku (a strict
three-line, seventeen-syllable form notable for its compression). This ancient form was also a favorite of
Richard Wright, and, like him, Sanchez does not limit herself to the original nature imagery and philosophical
content of the form’s medieval conventions. Her haiku poems range from tender love lyrics to bitter social
comment, as well as the philosophical meditation so well suited to the form.
One of Sanchez’s most complicated and lyrically complex texts is Does Your House Have Lions?, published
in 1997. In this epic poem, written in rhyme royal, Sanchez crafts both an elegy to her brother, recently
deceased from complications due to AIDS, and a meditation on familial loss, exile, and forgiveness. Weaving
together several voices, this piece is both intensely private and deeply public, a quiet liturgy and a call to
mend familial rifts.
Social Themes
Among Sanchez’s frequent themes in both poems and prose pieces is the denunciation of self-destructive
behavior in the African American community. “After Saturday Nite Comes Sunday,” in Homegirls and
Handgrenades, shows the pain and poverty a man’s narcotics addiction causes his wife and children.
Despite the power of their love for him, the man cannot be saved, yet the poet makes clear that such
tragedies are merely the symptoms of a deeper problem — the lack of self-esteem caused by a system of
racial oppression. This theme is often also presented in political terms with a sense of deep compassion for
all those who suffer. The poem “MIAs” speaks of blacks detained without bail by the South African police, the
“disappeared” villagers of El Salvador’s repressive government, and the string of abductions and murders of
African American children from the streets of Atlanta, Georgia. The poet declaims a sense of solidarity with
all these victims and ends on a note of determined resistance to terrorism:
let there be everywhere our actions.
breathing hope and victory
into their unspoken questions
summoning the dead to life again
to the hereafter of freedom.
Sanchez’s ecumenical social consciousness is displayed in Under a Soprano Sky with effective and moving
poems memorializing victims of oppression as well as a survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing and her
brother’s death from AIDS. A series of intense poems focuses on those who died in the police assault on a
dissident Philadelphia group called MOVE. When police bombed the group’s headquarters on May 13, 1985,
more than forty surrounding homes were destroyed. The poet, in utter disbelief, asks “how does one scream
in thunder?” and prays with a determined hope “for honor and peace./ one day.” In a world that can produce
such tragedy, Sanchez searches for hope in a sense of family and community. The beautiful “Dear Mama” is
a prose piece that recalls the poet’s childhood and the strength that can be found in adversity; it is nominally
addressed to the parent who died when the poet was an infant:
My life flows from you Mama. My style comes from a long line of Louises who picked me up in
the nite to keep me from wetting the bed. A long line of Sarahs who fed me and my sister and
fourteen other children from watery soups and beans and a lot of imagination.
Finally, Sanchez celebrates the collective nurturing and sees that her true heritage is “a long line of Black
people holding each other up against silence.” A significant stylistic development in Sanchez’s work supports
this war against the isolation figured in the word “silence.” The body of Sanchez’s work shows the increasing
use of a surrealistic imagery similar to that of negritude poets such as Aimé Césaire and Léon Damas.
These images often combine bodily references and natural forces, creating the impression of an animated
world of wonder that recalls ancient African religions and mythologies. An excellent example of this technique
is found in “Under a Soprano Sky”:
the woods, tall as waves, sang in mixed
tongues that loosened the scalp
and my bones wrapped in white dust
returned to echo in my thighs.
Such imagery makes the human body a responsive part of nature and blends physical and emotional levels
of consciousness. Some have suggested that this type of imagery also represents a feminine sensibility.
Islam and Spirituality
For a period in the early 1970’s, Sanchez was a member of the Nation of Islam and, under the Islamic name
Laila Mannan, wrote a series of important articles for the Muhammad Speaks newspaper. The patriarchal
regimen of the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad’s leadership apparently created a certain amount of
tension for the poet, and many of her Muhammad Speaks articles explored the basis for equality of the sexes
as she found it through extensive research into African history. This period also saw the publication of her
most ambitious poetic work, a long poem sequence entitled A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women,
which combined her historical research with Black Muslim motifs and an exploration of what it means to be
female. Sanchez’s long poem is a major work structured as the performance of a ritual modeled on ancient
Greek and Egyptian mysteries. Like most initiation rituals, this one involves a symbolic death and rebirth, and
the poem dramatically details a spiritual “possession” that leads the performer (or speaker) and her
audience to a level of greater self-awareness. The poem also provides Sanchez with an opportunity to
demonstrate her virtuosity in handling several different rhetorical modes.
The book opens with an introduction entitled “Queens of the Universe.” This rhythmical prose section
restates many of Sanchez’s familiar exhortations to African American women to improve their lives, heighten
their consciousness, and nurture their families. She urges women to embark on a mystical journey to
achieve self-knowledge: “we must looook/ at our past. not be angered at it. nor upset.” Such an attempt will
result in a valuable inventory of both strengths and weaknesses (much as Sanchez records in her later
“Dear Mama”), providing the necessary knowledge for building a better future. The next section, titled “The
Past,” presents five interconnected poems that reexamine the autobiographical material from childhood into
an imagined old age. Part 3, “The Present,” is a transition from the trancelike voices of the previous section
and allows the poet to reveal the insights gained from her “possession” by those spiritual voices.
Among the allegorical figures utilized by the poet are the archetypal Earth Mother and Maat (or Mayet), the
twin goddesses of right and truth symbolized in ancient Egyptian mythology as upright feathers. Sanchez
redefines Maat as “love of Black self and/ righteousness.” Many passages of the poem also present the
poet’s affirmation of the principles of Islam, including the teachings of Elijah Muhammad; the second half of
the book, made up of sections entitled “The Future” and “Rebirth,” is particularly rich in allusions drawn from
both the Koran and the Bible.
At the end of A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, the poet not only celebrates a personal rebirth
but also hears “the trumpets of a new age.” By facing her own life squarely, the poet has performed a sort of
purification ritual and is able to affirm that “i carry truth and righteousness/ on my body like emeralds,” which
is the reward for the labor and pain of “giving birth to ourselves.” Like the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the
Bible’s Book of Revelation, both of which are frequently alluded to in the second half of the work, Sanchez’s
volume might properly be called apocalyptic literature in the literal sense of the Greek word apokalypsis,
meaning an “unveiling” of true meaning. As in any initiation ritual, the candidate has undergone a process
designed to unveil the real nature of the self and its true potentialities. Such a process can only be
successful if the protagonist of the ritual is willing to relive the pain of false or mistaken identities and to suffer
the symbolic shock that accompanies a psychological rebirth. Clearly, also, the speaker sheds falsehood
and error, resulting in the elevation of truth and righteousness.
Sanchez’s political and ideological commitment, as reflected in her poetry, is to the freedom of the individual
for spiritual and moral self-realization. The message Sanchez presents in her most public orations and the
poems that are most personal is, in this sense, the same message. For Sanchez, regard for African
tradition, the celebration of freedom, and watchful criticism of its suppression are accomplished best through
song.
Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (1999)is a collection comprising several of Sanchez’s
earlier works as well as new poems. The poem “For Sweet Honey in the Rock” is dedicated to the Grammy
award-winning African American women’s a cappella group. Although the members of the ensemble have
changed over time (they have been making records since 1974), Sweet Honey in the Rock continues to
produce captivating music influenced by gospel, soul, and folk. Like Sanchez, Sweet Honey in the Rock
occupies an inexorable presence in American culture, one that is still significant and socially activated, even
thirty years after the original members first entered the scene. In Sanchez’s poem, the speaker uses
repetition much like a field call, as both a shout of praise to Sweet Honey in the Rock and, perhaps, a
promise to her readers: “I’m gonna stay on the battlefield/ I’m gonna stay on the battlefield/ I’m gonna stay on
the battlefield . . . until I die.” These lines and several that follow serve to sum up Sanchez’s poetic ideology
of nearly five decades — a resolute determination to articulate both the hideousness and the ineffable beauty
of a culture that transcends national lines, a history that eludes the pen, a poetry that unites across all
division — that is, a poetry that is hers.
Essay by: Lorenzo Thomas updated by; Lorenzo Thomas updated by Lorna Raven Wheeler
Bibliography
Bell, Bernard W. The Folk Roots of Contemporary Afro-American Poetry. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974.
Discusses Sanchez and her early contemporaries as the extension of African American folk traditions.
Provides a helpful historical context for interpreting her work.
Evans, Mari, ed. Black Women Writers, 1950-1980: A Critical Evaluation. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor
Press/Doubleday, 1983. Contains an interview with Sanchez entitled “Ruminations/Reflections” and an
overview of her poetry.
Frost, Elisabeth A., ed. The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press,
2003. Brings together a diverse group of women writers, including Harryette Mullen and Sonia Sanchez, to
challenge readers’ views about the avant-garde. In a compelling study of Sanchez’s work, Frost shows how
the text becomes a feminist site of protest and exploration.
Joyce, Joyce. Black Studies as Human Studies: Critical Essays and Interviews. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 2005. Includes a discussion of Sanchez’s place at the intersection of African and African
American literary traditions.
Joyce, Joyce. “The Development of Sonia Sanchez: A Continuing Journey.” Indian Journal of American
Studies 13 (1983): 37-71. A lengthy, thorough discussion of Sanchez’s evolution as a poet.
Keita, Michelle Nzadi. “Sonia Sanchez: ’Fearless About the World.’” In Impossible to Hold: Women and
Culture in the 1960’s, edited by Avital H. Bloch and Lauri Umansky. New York: New York University Press,
2005. Extended explication of the relationship of Sanchez’s social moment to her poetry, and vice versa.
Palmer, R. Roderick. “The Poetry of Three Revolutionists: Don L. Lee, Sonia Sanchez, and Nikki Giovanni.”
CLA Journal 15 (1971): 25-36. An early but still accurate assessment of Sanchez’s work. Views her in the
context of other leading poets of the Black Arts movement.
Sanchez, Sonia. Conversations with Sonia Sanchez. Edited by Joyce A. Joyce. Jackson: University Press of
Mississippi, 2007. This collection offers interviews with Sanchez held over a period of more than twenty
years.
Sanchez, Sonia. “Discipline and Craft: An Interview with Sonia Sanchez.” Interview by Susan Kelly. African
American Review 34, no. 4 (Winter, 2000): 679. In this interview, Sanchez discusses her early cultural and
literary influences.
Sanchez, Sonia. “Exploding Myths: An Interview with Sonia Sanchez.” Interview by Herbert Liebowitz.
Parnassus 12/13 (1985): 357-368. An illuminating exploration of Sanchez’s views on her life and works.
Sanchez, Sonia. “Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez: A Conversation.” Interview by Eisa Davis. Callaloo 25,
no. 4 (2002): 1038-1074. In this lengthy interview, one can explore Sanchez’s views on her subject position
and legacy as a black female artist.
Sanchez, Sonia. “Sounds Bouncin’ Off Paper: Black Language Memories and Meditations.” In Talkin’ Black
Talk: Language and Social Change, edited by H. Samy Alim and John Baugh. New York: Teachers College
Press, 2007. This collection, including Sanchez’s piece, explores the power and politics of language.
Sanchez, Sonia. “This Thing Called Playwrighting: An Interview with Sonia Sanchez on the Art of Her
Drama.” Interview by Jacqueline Wood. African American Review 39, nos. 1/2 (Spring/Summer, 2005): 119132. Offers a fascinating overview of Sanchez’s often-overlooked plays, as well as a compelling interview in
which Sanchez articulates her views on the value of theater.
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Source: Masterplots II: African American Literature, Revised Edition
Accession Number: 103331AFR12739640000193