#sparkchamber 021924 — Sonia Sanchez
Celebrating Black History Month, #sparkchamber continues to highlight the fierce women of the Black Arts Movement. Today, we shine a spotlight on poet, activist, and scholar Sonia Sanchez, “the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Temple University, and the recipient of both the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry, and the Langston Hughes Poetry Award. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is the author of sixteen books.”
“As a leading figure in the Black Arts Movement, Sanchez is known for her ability to blend musical formats [like jazz and blues] with traditional poetic forms [like haikus and tankas]. She credits inspiration to poets like Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown, who celebrated the unique and personal sounds of Black English and slang words of the time.”
Born as Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934 in Birmingham, AL, she “lost her mother as an infant, and her father moved the family to Harlem, NYC when she was nine. She received a B.A. [1955] in Political Science from Hunter College in Manhattan, and briefly studied writing at New York University. About this time, she married Alfred Sanchez, but the couple later divorced. From 1966, she taught in various universities, finally assuming a permanent post in 1975 as resident poet and member of the English faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia; she retired as professor emeritus in 1999.
“In the 1960s, Sanchez was introduced to the political activism of the times and published poetry in such journals as The Liberator, Journal of Black Poetry, Black Dialogue, and Negro Digest. Her first poetry collection, Homecoming [1969], contains considerable invective against “white America” and “white violence;” thereafter she continued to write on what she called the “neoslavery” of Blacks, as socially and psychologically unfree beings. She also wrote about sexism, child abuse, and generational and class conflicts. A good deal of Sanchez’s verse is written in American Black speech patterns, eschewing formal English grammar and pronunciations.
“Over the years, Sanchez joined other activists in promoting Black studies in schools, in agitating for the rights of African countries, and in sponsoring various other causes, such as that of the Nicaraguan Sandanistas. Later poetry collections included homegirls & handgrenades [1984], which won an American Book Award; Under a Soprano Sky [1986]; Does Your House Have Lions? [1997]; Shake Loose My Skin [1999]; and Morning Haiku [2010]. In 2018 Sanchez received the Academy of American Poets’ Wallace Stevens Award.”
Of Sonia Sanchez, fellow Black Arts Movement poet Maya Angelou said, “Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature’s forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.”
Thank you for your voice, Ms. Sanchez.
1.] Where do ideas come from?
Art... reacts to or reflects the culture it springs from.
2.] What is the itch you are scratching?
I write to tell the truth about the black condition as I see it. Therefore, I write to offer a black woman’s view of the world.
3.] Early bird or night owl? Tortoise or hare?
The words loved me and I loved them in return.
4.] How do you know when you are done?
The joy of poetry is that it will wait for you. Novels don’t wait for you. Characters change. But poetry will wait. I think it's the greatest art.
