Sonia Sanchez
Encyclopedia
Poet
A poet is a person who writes poetry. A poet's work can be literal, meaning that his work is derived from a specific event, or metaphorical, meaning that his work can take on many meanings and forms. Poets have existed since antiquity, in nearly all languages, and have produced works that vary...
most often associated with the Black Arts Movement
Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka...
. She has authored over a dozen books of poetry, as well as plays and children's books. She was a 1993 Pew Fellowships in the Arts
Pew Fellowships in the Arts
The Pew Fellowships in the Arts is an organization established by the Pew Charitable Trusts in 1991 which awards grants to Philadelphia-area artists. The grants provide artists with an economic freedom that presents the opportunity to focus on their individual practices over a considerable period...
.
Early life
Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, AlabamaBirmingham, Alabama
Birmingham is the largest city in Alabama. The city is the county seat of Jefferson County. According to the 2010 United States Census, Birmingham had a population of 212,237. The Birmingham-Hoover Metropolitan Area, in estimate by the U.S...
on September 9, 1934.
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
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...
to live with her father, her sister, and her stepmother who was her father's third wife. In 1955, she received a B.A. in Political Science from Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, 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
Louise Bogan
Louise Bogan was an American poet. She was appointed the fourth Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress in 1945.-Early years:...
. Although her first marriage to Albert Sanchez did not last, Sonia Sanchez would retain her professional name. Sanchez then married poet Etheridge Knight
Etheridge Knight
Etheridge Knight was an African-American poet who became a notable poet in 1968 with his debut volume, Poems from Prison. The book recalls in verse his eight-year-long sentence after Etheridge was arrested for robbery in 1960...
. They later divorced. In 1972, she joined the Nation of Islam
Nation of Islam
The Nation of Islam is a mainly African-American new religious movement founded in Detroit, Michigan by Wallace D. Fard Muhammad in July 1930 to improve the spiritual, mental, social, and economic condition of African-Americans in the United States of America. The movement teaches black pride and...
, but left the organization after three years in 1975 because her views on women's rights conflicted with theirs. She has three children and 3 grandchildren.
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 first 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.Sanchez is a member of the Plowshares, the Brandywine Peace Community and MADRE
Madré
Madré is a commune in the Mayenne department in north-western France.The maternal great grandfather of Saint Thérèse de Lisieux, Louis Macé, was baptised in the village church on 16th March 1778....
. She also supports MOMS AND in Alabama and the National Black United Front
National Black United Front
The National Black United Front is an African-American organization formed in the late 1970s in Brooklyn, New York. Its headquarters are in South Shore, Chicago, Illinois....
.
Sanchez was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
and the Black Arts Movement
Black Arts Movement
The Black Arts Movement or BAM is the artistic branch of the Black Power movement. It was started in Harlem by writer and activist Amiri Baraka...
. Sanchez was an advocate for the people. She was a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X
Malcolm X
Malcolm X , born Malcolm Little and also known as El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz , was an African American Muslim minister and human rights activist. To his admirers he was a courageous advocate for the rights of African Americans, a man who indicted white America in the harshest terms for its...
. 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.
Sanchez is also known for her innovative melding of musical formats - like the blues - and traditional poetic formats like haiku
Haiku in English
Haiku in English is a development of the Japanese haiku poetic form in the English language.Contemporary haiku are written in many languages, but most poets outside of Japan are concentrated in the English-speaking countries....
and tanka. She also tends to use incorrect spelling to get her point across.
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 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.
Discography
- A Sun Lady for All Seasons Reads Her Poetry (Folkways RecordsFolkways RecordsFolkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987, and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways.-History:...
, 1971) - Every Tone a Testimony (Smithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...
, 2001)
External links
- Official Website
- Academy of American Poets
- Sonia Sanchez Biography at Voices from the Gap
- Approaches to Teaching Sonia Sanchez's Poetry
- An Evening with Sonia Sanchez
- Painted Voices: Sonia Sanchez Biography
- Women of Color Women of Word
- Sonia Sanchez Biography at Speak Out
- Beacon Press web site for Sonia Sanchez.
- Sonia Sanchez Article at the Heath Anthology of American Literature
- Sanchez Discography at Smithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian FolkwaysSmithsonian Folkways is the nonprofit record label of the Smithsonian Institution. It is a part of the Smithsonian's Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, located at Capital Gallery in downtown Washington, D.C. The label was founded in 1987 after the family of Moses Asch, founder of Folkways...
- Sonia Sanchez's oral history video excerpts at The National Visionary Leadership Project