Sonia Sanchez

Early life

Sanchez was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 9, 1934. Her mother died when Sanchez was only two years old, so she spent several years being shuttled back and forth among relatives. One of those was her grandmother, who died when Sanchez was six. In 1943, she moved to Harlem to live with her father, her sister, and her stepmother, who was her father's third wife. In 1955, Sanchez received a B.A. in Political Science from Hunter College, where she had also taken several creative writing courses. Later, she completed postgraduate work at New York University, where she studied poetry with Louise Bogan.

The death of her grandmother proved to be a trying time in her life. Though only six, Sanchez suffered from losing her loved one, developing a terrible stutter that caused her to become introverted. However, her stutter only caused her to read more and more and pay close attention to language and its sounds. When in Harlem, she overcame her stutter and excelled in school, finding her poetic voice which later emerged during her studies at Hunter College. Sanchez focuses on the sound of her poetry, admitting to always reading her poetry aloud. She is known for her sonic range and dynamic public readings. She now terms herself an "ordained stutterer".

Although her first marriage to Albert Sanchez did not last, Sonia Sanchez would retain her professional name. She did not have children with Albert but with her second husband Etheridge Knight. So together, they had three children: a daughter, Anita, and twin sons, Moran Neuse and Mungu Neuse. Motherhood heavily influenced the motifs of her poetry in the '70s, the bond between mother and child emerging as a key theme. Sanchez and Knight later divorced. She also has three grandchildren.

Teaching

She taught 5th Grade in NYC at the Downtown Community School, until 1967. Sanchez has taught as a professor at eight universities and has lectured at over 500 college campuses across the US, including Howard University. In 1966, while teaching at San Francisco State University she introduced Black Studies courses. Sanchez was the first to create and teach a course based on Black Women and literature in the United States and the course she offered on African American literature is generally considered the first of its kind taught at a predominately white university. Sanchez was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began working in 1977. There, 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.

Activism

Sanchez supports the National Black United Front. Sanchez was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. In the early 1960s, Sanchez became a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X. Though she was originally an integrationist in her thinking, after hearing Malcolm X speak Sanchez became more separatist in her thinking and focused more on her black heritage and identity.

In 1972, Sanchez joined the Nation of Islam, during which time she published A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974), but left the organization after three years in 1975 because their views on women's rights conflicted. She continues to advocate for the rights of oppressed women and minority groups. She wrote many plays and books that had to do with the struggles and lives of Black America. Sanchez has edited two anthologies on Black literature, We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans and 360° of Blackness Coming at You. She is also committed to a variety of activist causes, including the Brandywine Peace Community, MADRE, and Plowshares.

Black Arts Movement

Sanchez gained a reputation as an important voice in the Black Arts movement after publishing the book of poems Home Coming in 1969. This collection and her second in 1970, titled We a BaddDDD People established her place in the Black Arts Movement as a poet who used experimental poetic forms to discuss the development of black nationalism and identity. Along with other prominent writers from the Black Arts Movement, Madhubuti (Don L. Lee), Nikki Giovanni, and Etheridge Knight, Sanchez formed the "Broadside Quartet".

Style and themes

Sanchez is known for her innovative melding of musical formats—such as the blues—and traditional poetic formats like haiku and tanka. She also tends to use incorrect spelling to celebrate the unique sound of black English, for which she gives credit to poets such as Langston Hughes and Sterling Brown.

Her first collection of poems, Home Coming (1969), is known for its blues influences in both form and content. The collection describes both the struggle of defining black identity in the United States as well as the many causes for celebration Sanchez sees in black culture. Her second book, We a BaddDDD People (1970), solidifies her contribution to the Black Arts Movement aesthetic by focusing on the everyday lives of black men and women. These poems make use of urban black vernacular, experimental punctuation, spelling, and spacing, and the performative quality of jazz.

Though still emphasizing what she sees as the need for revolutionary cultural change, Sanchez’s later works, such as I’ve Been a Woman (1978), Homegirls and Handgrenades (1984), and Under a Soprano Sky (1987), tend to focus less on separatist themes (like those of Malcolm X), and more on themes of love, community, and empowerment. She continues to explores the haiku, tanka, and sonku forms, as well as blues-influenced rhythms. Later works continue her experiments with forms such as the epic in Does Your House Have Lions? (1997) and the haiku in Morning Haiku (2010).

Contemporary works

Her more recent contemporary endeavors include a spoken-word interlude on "Hope is an Open Window", a song co-written by Diana Ross from her 1998 album Every Day is a New Day. The song is featured as the sound bed for a tribute video to 9/11 that can be viewed on YouTube. Sanchez is currently among 20 African-American women to be a part of "Freedom Sisters", a mobile exhibition initiated by the Cincinnati Museum Center and the Smithsonian Institution.

Sanchez became Philadelphia's first Poet Laureate, after being appointed by Mayor Michael Nutter. She served in that position from 2012 to 2014.

In 2013 Sanchez headlined the 17th annual Poetry Ink at which she read her poem "Under a Soprano Sky".

BaddDDD Sonia Sanchez, a documentary film by Barbara Attie, Janet Goldwater and Sabrina Schmidt Gordon, spotlighting Sanchez's work, career, influence and life story, was released in 2015 when it showed at the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival The film premiered in the UK on June 22, 2016, at Rivington Place.

Awards

In 1969, Sanchez was awarded the P.E.N. Writing Award. She was awarded the National Education Association Award 1977–1988. She won the National Academy and Arts Award and the National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Award in 1978–79. In 1985, she received the American Book Award for Homegirls and Handgrenades. 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, as well as the 1999 Langston Hughes Poetry Award, the 2004 Harper Lee Award, and the 2006 National Visionary Leadership Award.

In 2017 Sanchez was honored at the 16th Annual Dr. Betty Shabazz Awards in a ceremony held on June 29 at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Harlem.

Discography