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Sonia Sanchez

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Sonia Sanchez at Miami Book Fair International, 1990. Photo by Miami - Dade County Archives. Licensed under Creative Commons, courtesy Wikimedia Commons.

Sonia Sanchez (born September 9, 1934) is an African-American poet most often associated with the Black Arts Movement. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books.

Life[]

Youth[]

Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama on September 9, 1934.[1] When Sanchez was only a year old, her mother died and Sanchez was sent to live with her paternal grandmother. She then lived with family and friends until 1941, when she moved to Harlem to live with her father, her sister, and her stepmother who was her father's 3rd wife.

In 1955, she received a B.A. in Political Science from Hunter College, where she had also taken several creative writing courses. Later, Sanchez completed postgraduate work at New York University where she studied poetry with Louise Bogan.

Although her 1st marriage to Albert Sanchez did not last, Sonia Sanchez would retain her professional name. Sanchez then married poet Etheridge Knight. They later divorced. In 1972, she joined the Nation of Islam, but left the organization after 3 years in 1975 because her views on women's rights conflicted with theirs. She has 3 children and 3 grandchildren.[2][3]

Career[]

Sanchez has taught as a professor at eight universities and has lectured at over 500 college campuses across the US, including Howard University. She advocated the introduction of Black Studies courses in California. Sanchez was the first to create and teach a course based on Black Women and literature in the United States. Sanchez was the inaugural Presidential Fellow at Temple University where she began working in 1977, where she held the Laura Carnell chair until her retirement in 1999. She is currently a poet-in-residence at Temple University. She has read her poetry in Africa, the Caribbean, China, Australia, Europe, Nicaragua, Canada, and Cuba. Sanchez has also appeared on Bill Cosby's CBS show in the 1990s.[4]

Sanchez is a member of Plowshares, the Brandywine Peace Community and MADRE. She also supports MOMS AND in Alabama and the National Black United Front. Sanchez was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. Sanchez was an advocate for the people. She was a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X. She wrote many plays and books that had to do with the struggles and lives of Black America. Sanchez has edited 2 anthologies on Black literature, We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans and 360° of Blackness Coming at You.

Sanchez is also known for her innovative melding of musical formats - like the blues - and traditional poetic formats like haiku and tanka. She also tends to use incorrect spelling to get her point across.

Recognition[]

In 1969, Sanchez was awarded the P.E.N. Writing Award. She was awarded the National Education Association Award 1977-1988. She also won the National Academy and Arts Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in 1978-1979. In 1985, she was awarded the American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades. She won a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts.

She has also been awarded the Community Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Governor's Award for Excellence in the Humanities, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom.

Publications[]

Poetry[]

  • Homecoming. Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1969.
  • We a Baddddd People (with foreword by Dudley Randall). Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1970.
  • Ima Talken Bout the Nation of Islam. TruthDel, 1972.
  • Love Poems. New York: Third Press, 1973.
  • A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women. Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1973.
  • I've Been a Woman: New and selected poems. Sausalito, CA: Black Scholar Press, 1978.
  • homegirls and handgrenades. New York: Thunder's Mouth Press, 1984; White Pine Press, 2007.
  • Under a Soprano Sky. Trenton, NJ: Africa World, 1987.
  • Wounded in the House of a Friend. Boston: Beacon Press, 1995.
  • Does Your House have Lions? Boston: Beacon Press, 1997.
  • Like the Singing Coming Off of the Drums. Boston:, Beacon Press, 1998.
  • Shake Loose My Skin: New and selected poems. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
  • Morning Haiku. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.[5]

Non-fiction[]

  • Crisis in Culture: Two speeches by Sonia Sanchez. Black Liberation Press, 1983.
  • Conversations with Sonia Sanchez (edited by Joyce Ann Joyce). University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

Juvenile[]

  • It's a New Day: Poems for young brothas and aistuhs. Detroit, MI: Broadside Press, 1971.
  • The Adventures of Fat Head, Small Head, and Square Head (illustrated by Taiwo DuVall). New York: Third Press, 1973.
  • A Sound Investment, and other stories. Chicago: Third World Press, 1979.

Edited[]

  • Three Hundred and Sixty Degrees of Blackness Comin' at You. 5X Publishing, 1971.
  • We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 stories by Black Americans (editor & contributor). New York: Bantam, 1973.
  • Allison Funk, Living at the Epicenter: The 1995 Morse Poetry Prize (Compiler and author of introduction). Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1995.


Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.[6]

Plays performed[]

  • The Bronx Is Next (first produced in New York, NY, at Theatre Black, October 3, 1970); included in Cavalcade: Negro American Writing from 1760 to the Present (edited by Arthur Davis and Saunders Redding). Boston: Houghton, 1971.
  • Sister Son/ji (first produced with Cop and Blow and Players Inn by Neil Harris and Gettin' It Together by Richard Wesley as Black Visions, Off-Broadway at New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theatre, 1972); included in New Plays From the Black Theatre (edited by Ed Bullins). New York: Bantam, 1969.
  • Uh Huh; But How Do It Free Us? (first produced in Chicago at Northwestern University Theater, 1975); included in The New Lafayette Theatre Presents: Plays with aesthetic comments by six black playwrights (Ed Bullins, J. E. Gaines, Clay Gross, Oyamo, Sonia Sanchez, Richard Wesley; edited by Bullins). Garden City, NY: Anchor Press [Garden City, NY], 1974).
  • Malcolm Man/Don't Live Here No More (first produced in Philadelphia, PA, at ASCOM Community Center, 1979).
  • I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't" (first produced in Atlanta, GA, at OIC Theatre, April 23, 1982).
Sonia_Sanchez_performing_A_Poem_About_Peace

Sonia Sanchez performing A Poem About Peace

Def_Poetry_-_Sonia_Sanchez_-_Poem_for_Some_Women

Def Poetry - Sonia Sanchez - Poem for Some Women


Except where noted, information courtesy the Poetry Foundation.[6]

Audio / video[]

Discography[]

  • A Sun Lady for All Seasons Reads Her Poetry. Folkways Records, 1971
  • Every Tone a Testimony. Smithsonian Folkways, 2001.


See also[]

References[]

Notes[]

  1. ↑ Rodriguez, Raquel (2006). "Sanchez, Sonia (1934-)". In Elizabeth Ann Beaulieu. Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and about Women of Color. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Press. pp. 764–8. ISBN 0-313-33197-9. 
  2. ↑ Emmanuel Sampath Nelson, ed (2004). African American dramatists: an A-to-Z guide. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 9780313322334. http://books.google.com/books?id=w9CJ0ngs62IC&pg=PA371&dq=Sonia+Sanchez&lr=&cd=38#v=onepage&q=Sonia%20Sanchez&f=false. 
  3. ↑ Avital H. Bloch, Lauri Umansky, ed (2005). Impossible to hold: women and culture in the 1960's. NYU Press. ISBN 9780814799109. http://books.google.com/books?id=g0edMnCw5N0C&pg=PA279&dq=Sonia+Sanchez&lr=&cd=47#v=onepage&q=Sonia%20Sanchez&f=false. 
  4. ↑ TV Guide
  5. ↑ Morning Haiku, Google Books. Web, Nov. 25, 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Sonia Sanchez b. 1934, Poetry Foundation, Web, Nov. 25, 2012.

External links[]

Poems
Audio / video
Books
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