interview with poet-activist sonia sanchez

INTERVIEW WITH
POET-ACTIVIST SONIA SANCHEZ
Recebido em: 09/04/2012
Aceito em: 20/04/2012
Publicado em: 08/09/2012
Abstract. In this interview, poet, playwright and human rights activist, Sonia
Sanchez, offers rare commentary on her creative process and her life as an artistactivist. Sanchez discusses her childhood in Alabama and the influence of her father
and her grandmother in her work. She talks about her dissatisfactions with organized
religion, the meaning of spirituality in her life, and the challenge of living a
principled life. Sanchez also describes her encounter with Malcolm X, her experience
in the Nation of Islam and gender tensions in the Black Arts Movement. Finally,
Prof. Sanchez offers advice to young hip hop artists and explains her creative process
as a writer.
Keywords: Sonia Sanchez. Black Arts Movement. Malcolm X. Poetry. Religion.
* Sônia Sanchez é poeta com mais de 20 livros publicados. Militante ativa do Black Arts Movement
sempre lutou pelos direitos dos afro-americanos, recebeu vários prêmios de literatura por sua obra.
Mais informações em português sobre a entrevistada estão presentes ao final da entrevista aqui
publicada. The interview was conducted by Rachel E. Harding and Vincent G. Harding. Rachel E.
Harding edited the conversation.
# Historiadora da diáspora africana nas Américas com especialização em religiões negras no Brasil,
EUA e em Cuba. Professora do Departamento de Estudos Étnicos na University of Colorado
Denver. Autora de A refuge in thunder: Candomblé and alternative spaces of blackness, publicado
em 2000 pela Indiana University Press. É também autora de vários ensaios e artigos sobre a relação
entre religião negra e resistência.
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ENTREVISTA COM A POETA E MILITANTE NEGRA SÔNIA
SANCHEZ
Resumo. Nesta entrevista, a poeta, dramaturga e militante dos direitos humanos,
Sonia Sanchez, oferece comentários raros sobre seu processo criativo e sua como
artista-activista. A escritora fala da sua infância no Alabama e a influencia do pai e da
avó em sua vida e trabalho. Ela comenta sobre seus descontentamentos com a
religião organizada, o significado da espiritualidade em sua vida, e o desafio do ser
humano viver uma vida baseado em princípios. Sanchez também lembra seu
encontro com Malcolm X, sua experiência na Nação Islâmica e tensões entre
homens e mulheres no Black Arts Movement (Movimento Artes Negras) dos anos
1960 e 1970. No final, Profa. Sanchez oferece conselhos aos artistas jovens do hip
hop e explica o seu processo criador como escritora.
Palavras-chave: Sonia Sanchez. Movimento Artes Negras. Malcolm X. Poesia.
Religião.
S
Introduction
onia Sanchez has been a writer, educator and human rights advocate for
over fifty years. A celebrated poet and playwright, Sanchez first
emerged as one of the signal voices the Black Arts Movement of the
1960s and 1970s in the United States. The Black Arts Movement was a
singularly significant moment in the history of American literature and visual
art, described by critic Larry Neal as “the aesthetic and spiritual sister of the
Black Power concept.” (Neal, 1968) The movement was characterized by a
literature of social protest that offered both a vibrant critique of the status
quo and alternative visions of racial and economic justice. Between 1965 and
1975, hundreds of grassroots arts organizations developed in Black
communities across the USA, inspired by the political and cultural nationalism
of Black Power and looking to explore creative uses of literature, dance,
music and other expressive forms in relationship to the struggle for human
and civil rights for African Americans. Sonia Sanchez was at the center of this
creative thriving, in association with writers like Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn
Brooks, Haki Madhubuti, Etheridge Knight, June Jordan, Hoyt Fuller, Nikki
Giovanni, Askia Muhammad Touré and Mari Evans. Prof. Sanchez also
helped found the movement for African American Studies and was on the
faculty at San Francisco State College (now, University) when it developed the
first Black Studies department in the nation.
Sanchez has published over twenty books of poetry, drama and
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children’s literature; and has edited two anthologies. She received the P.E.N.
Writing Award, the American Book Award, the National Endowment for the
Arts Fellowship, and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women’s
International League for Peace and Freedom, among others honors. In 2011
she was named the poet laureate of the city of Philadelphia where she lives.
Born Wilsonia Benita Driver in Birmingham, Alabama in 1934,
Sanchez was raised by her grandmother (whom she called “Mama”) and other
relatives after her mother passed when Sanchez was only a year old. As a girl,
Sanchez moved to New York to live with her father and stepmother in
Harlem. Her father was a master drummer and worked in the city as a
musician and luncheonette employee. She earned a BA in political science
from Hunter College in 1955 and did postgraduate work at New York
University. In the early 1960s, Sanchez became involved in the burgeoning
Civil Rights Movement, working for a time as an organizer with the Congress
of Racial Equality in Harlem. It was in the context of her work with CORE
that she met Malcolm X, and, although initially hesitant to embrace his views,
eventually she was deeply influenced by both his Black nationalism and his
broad vision of anti-racism as a global issue of human rights.
Sanchez has been a professor at eight universities and retired from
Temple University in 1999 as the Laura Carnell Professor of English. In
recent years, in addition to her own publications, she has collaborated with
hip hop spoken word artists and rappers, who are, in a sense, inheritors of the
Black Arts Movement tradition of a poetry of rhythmic, incisive, political
critique. Through her prolific published work, her teaching and mentoring of
young writers and hip hop artists, her principled activism for the rights of
women, gays, workers, immigrants and people of African descent worldwide,
Prof Sanchez continues to utilize art as a tool for compassionate social
change.
Childhood: “In Our Tribe the Men Do Not Hit the Women”
Sonia Sanchez: I was born in a place called Birmingham, Alabama. I had a
grandmother who was the head deaconess , in the AME Zion [African
Methodist Episcopal Zion church] , which meant that we went to Sunday
School. We went to regular church, we came home, had dinner and went back
1 Deaconess: a respected, elder woman in an African American Protestant church who serves as an
auxiliary to the ordained ministers.
2 African Methodist Episcopal Church: a historically Black Protestant denomination.
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for evening services. It meant also that our Saturdays were also involved with
the church, which meant all of the sisters, all of those old sisters, came to our
house to cook the food for the next day. They snapped their beans. They
cleaned the chicken. They mixed the flour and stuff for the bread. They cut
up the greens and did the turnips. They did all of that, but they did something
else.
I saw them moving in slowly to my grandmother's house, to Mama's
house. I remember many of them dressed in black and I remember looking at
them, you could kind of smell them coming, you know? Wherever I was, I
got a whiff of those old women coming. Whatever I was doing. Whatever
tree I was in, or whatever mischief I was in... I would stop that trouble and I
would go running into the house and slide behind the couch to listen to those
women. My grandmother always saw me come in and she never said, “No,
you couldn't.” Now, if I made too much noise she would cut her eyes around
that corner which meant, Keep quiet or get out. I heard those sisters. Their
conversation was about what was going on in the church, who was doing
what with whom. But especially when there was a problem, for some of the
sisters, that group resolved the problems in the church for the women.
One of the problems, at some point, was that a man had started to
beat his wife and she brought the problem to the group of women. My
grandmother divvied up the children. She said, “You take the girl because you
have two girls. You take the boy because you have two boys. You do this.”
And then she said, “We have to get Sister Janie in here and tell her what she
gotta do. And what she gotta do is put on the stove some grits, or some
grease and wake him up and say, if you hit me again, I will pour this on you.”
There was a silence after that. And then one of the women would
kind of smile and say “Mm-hmm. That'll do it. That’ll do it.” And one would
say, “Well, he'll leave for a while, but he'll come back.” They didn't have
psychologists and psychiatrists to figure that one out. They knew that they
couldn't go to the preacher for that so therefore they went amongst
themselves and. going amongst themselves, they figured it out. I remember
one thing that I carried with me for years. Mama said, “In our tribe the men
don't hit the women.” The word “tribe” was an interesting word for me. I
don’t know why she said it, but – “in our tribe, the men don't hit the women.”
And that is how they resolved it.
Entrevistadora: Tell us how you got from that little girl among all the blackdressed sisters, in that church, to the woman, the activist, who didn't go to
church. How did that pathway go?
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Sanchez: Well, my grandmother died when I was six – this woman who
allowed me to be. I am forever grateful to her, to her life, for her being on this
earth because I was a child who, when I was told to go outside and play, I
played roughly and came back in. And I was all ragged, you know? She let me
be ragged. She protected me. And when she died I was wise enough, at six, to
know that my protector had died. As a consequence, I began a whole process,
a long life of stuttering and being tongue-tied. I became quite introverted,
which meant I began to write little ditties.
I do believe that one of the ways that I was protected by my
grandmother is that this stuttering was almost like speaking in tongues. When
I spoke in this way, nobody on this earth wanted to be around me. Period. It
was a very lonely childhood, actually. I was allowed to read and study and do
what I needed to do. When that was no longer needed, the stutters left. They
went.
Finding the Schomburg Library and African American Literature
[Shortly after graduation from Hunter College, Sanchez had been offered, and
then quickly refused, a job at the New York Times. She was on her way to the
Urban League to file a complaint of racism when she happened across the
Schomburg Collection .]
Sanchez: I forever give thanks to Miss Hutson who began to give me
information and books to read….Going across Lenox Avenue, going to 7th
Avenue, going over to the Urban League, there was this little library there and
it said Schomburg. I was hot. I was sweaty. I had taken off my hat. My feet
were hurting me from the heels. I was hot and I went inside the Schomburg
and said to the guard standing there, “What kind of library is this?” He says,
“Go inside. Ask the lady who runs it.” I walked inside and the old Schomburg
had the old glass door there and the old long tables where all those scholars
were sitting. All these male scholars. Not one female there. I went and
knocked on the door. I said hello and I told her my name. She said, “I'm Miss
Jean Hutson.” I said, “What kind of library is this?” She said, “It's a library
that has books only by and about Black folks. All these books are about Black
3 The Urban League is one of the oldest, national civil rights organizations in the United States.
4 The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture is one of the largest collections in the world of
writings by and about people of African descent.
5 Jean Blackwell Hutson (1914-1998) was chief officer of the Schomburg Collection from 1948 until
1980.
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folks.” I said, at nineteen-and-a-half, “There must not be many books in
here.” (Later, every time I brought my class to the Schomburg when Miss
Hutson was there she told that story on me. I will never forget it. She told
that story on this brash young woman who said “There must not be many
books in here.”)
She said, “Sit down, dear.” So I took my chair and eased in amongst
the scholars who looked up at me in a very disdainful fashion. She put three
books there,
,
, and
. For some reason I started reading
and I got a third into that book and went, “Oh!,” pushed my
chair out, went over to the glass case, knocked on the door. She came and
said, “Yes dear?” I said, “How could I be educated and not have read this
book? This is a beautiful book.” She said, “Yes, dear, now go sit and read.” I
read some more and I was reading and just reading, reading, reading and I was
almost finished and I put the book down again and went and knocked on the
door. She saw me coming. She kind of opened…and I just literally hugged
her. I had tears in my eyes. She said, “Sit down now, sit down, Sonia.” One of
the scholars who was sitting next to me looked up and said, “Miss Hutson,
will you please tell this young woman either to sit still or leave?” So I sat still
for one week. I came in there every day. I was supposed to be looking for a
job and every day I'd come in and I read, and I read, and even when I didn't
find a job, I read there.
When it was time for us to teach Black Literature later on the people
were saying, “Oh, you need someone? Get Sonia. She's read all that old Black
Lit stuff, she can teach it.” That old Black Lit stuff – that's what they said at
that time. It was true, I had read all that old Black Lit stuff and I was able to
teach it at San Francisco State.
On Religion
Sanchez: I think that I was probably part of that generation who
consistently, for a while, tried to deny the role of religion in our lives. We were
what I call “political.” As a consequence, there was no role of religion. That
is not to say that we were not raised, in quotes, “religiously.” I always felt
comfortable in churches. It's interesting that I did not feel uncomfortable. I
6 DuBois, W.E.B. (1903) The Souls of Black Folk. Chicago, IL: AC McClurg; Washington, Booker T.
(1901) Up From Slavery: An Autobiography. New York: Doubleday; Hurston, Zora Neale (1937)
Their Eyes Were Watching God. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott.
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always thought of, I guess, the history of my grandmother. I always felt that it
was not an alien place to my eyes and my bloodstream. I always thought that
the problem with the churches happened to be the men and women who
were not teaching truth. I have had occasion to stand up and say things, like,
“But I thought this was a holy place” when people would do gay bashing.
And [I would] leave. Because I think if Jesus were to come back to some of
these churches, he would be crucified again by holy people – so-called holy
people.
It just seemed to me that the best place for me was outside what I call
organized religion to begin to find a place for my ideas to reside or to rest in.
I think that being outside of organized religion, outside of churches, I was
able to develop. Whatever was out there, I had the freedom to examine,
whereas I know sometimes in organized religion you are stopped along the
way.
Well, I think that each one of us put on this earth has got to make up
our minds whether we are going to continue – not even continue, begin – a
walk towards being human. I think that we've got to finally recognize that's
what this is all about. It seemed to me that if you see people under the guise
of some religion, oppressing people, you've got to speak about it.
It seems to me that everyplace you go you've got to make it holy.
Every place we teach, we must make it holy. Every household we live in, it
must be made holy. You've got to say at some point, “Within this arena where
I stand, I will not allow unholy actions, or unprinci¬pled actions, or unjust
actions.”
Holy Places
Entrevistadora: I want to come back to the idea of holy work and holy
places. In a sense, your work as a teacher, as an artist, is a kind of ministry -although you may not use those words, yourself. What I'm interested in is
how you sustain yourself for the work that you do?
Sanchez: That's a hard question. I was talking to a dear friend who is a writer
one day and I said to her, “You know, sometimes it is very difficult to always
stand up and challenge things that are incorrect. Sometimes you feel as if you
are all alone. Although I know there are other people – but we don't always
join together.” She said, “Sonia, have you ever acknowledged the people, your
mother and your grandmother, who have always been with you all these
years?” And I thought, “I don't know if I have or not.”
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I know that my mother has been with me. My mother died giving
birth to twins when I was one year old, and when I gave birth to my twins,
they didn't expect twins from me. I had these twins and I was very tired and
the doctor said, “Congratulations, you have two sons.” They rolled me into a
room and I went to sleep and in the middle of the night I woke up because I
heard a voice calling me. The voice was calling Sonia, Sonia, Sonia and I
raised up and I said, Yes, Yes, Yes. The I.V. had been put in incorrectly,
evidently, I was told later on, and it had been put in so very fast that my
stomach had hardened. What’s significant about that is that my mother had
died with babies that had hardened inside her belly. They couldn't get it out,
so she died and the twins died. But I venture to say that the person who came
to save me from that death was my mother. And I had to recognize it was my
mother in the midst of how we are educated. We get so educated away from
many spiritual things in our lives, you see, we don't really believe that's a
possibility at all. And I had to come back into that reality. So I pulled on that
when my friend said that I had to go back and think about that mother who
had come and saved me from the death that she had experienced – because I
was not to experience that death at all. Which meant, of course, that there
was a mother; there was a grandmother who was there, who, as I said, was still
protecting me although I thought she wasn't.
Father: On His Terms
Entrevistadora: I'd like to hear something more about your father and what
kind of spirituality, religion, whatever seemed to be important to his life and
that may have moved in some way into your life.
Sanchez: That's a very good question, because in the midst of writing my
memoirs, I've had to begin to deal with that part of my life -- a better
understanding of my father, a better understanding of his role in my life. For
instance, my father was a school teacher in Alabama and also a musician. My
father taught Papa Joe Jones how to play drums which is really significant on
many levels. My father used to play the drums at some of those silent movie
houses. Papa Joe walked in once and saw him and said, “Well this is how I
play the drums.” And he beat the drums. And my father said, “Well you are
doing it wrong. This is how you are supposed to play the drums.” Papa Joe
Jones, with his fast self, allowed himself to be taught the proper way to hold
7 Papa Joe Jones (1911-1985) was an accomplished African American jazz drummer
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the sticks and the proper way to play at some point.
My father was a person who, when he lost his wife, my mother, came
into our lives with presents at the holidays and allowed my Grandmother,
Mama, and my cousins and aunts to do the work of raising us for a while. I
think that he begins to play a significant role when we go to a place called
New York City because at that time we were all together, living together.
We came to Harlem. We came to a New York that was quite different
from Alabama. The landscape was different. We came to 152nd Street and St.
Nicholas Place. Right by the Polo grounds. We came to Stitt Junior High
School. We came to a back apartment on the first floor with very little light. I
was accustomed to space, trees and going wherever it was I wanted to go. You
were restricted there, by the buildings, by the space. The rooms were so small
in that back apartment and there was no light at all there, and as a
consequence, I think we learned as children to stay outdoors a great deal. My
father could not teach school when he came north. He took a job with Chock
Full o' Nuts and moved his way up to a manager of the store and continued
to play music down in the Village.
Entrevistadora: What instrument did he play?
Sanchez: Drums. The drums. The significant thing about my father, I think,
is that his religion was music on many levels.
Entrevistadora: What do you mean by that?
Sanchez: I think that what kept him motivated and alive was the music. My
father tells a fantastic story. Once when they were traveling – they are all
inducted in the Alabama Music Hall of Fame – but in the summertime, as
teachers, they needed to make money. So Fess Whatley , who was the leader
of the band, took them on a tour. This is the story. My father tells where they
were in one of these southern towns. (And my father calls it a southern
cracker town.) They were playing music for all of these southern White
people and some of the men got drunk and began to walk up and say “Play
this and play this and play this and play this.” They got very rude and began
to throw money on the stage. My father says Fess was an older gentleman,
very regal and very dignified. He began to say, “It's time for us to leave
because these men are drinking and this could be dangerous.” Also, some of
the women started to come around the bandstand and there’s some very
8 Chock full o’ Nuts is a line of coffee and sandwich shops in New York.
9 John Tuggle “Fess” Whatley (d. 1972) was a noted bandleader and music educator in Alabama; leader
of the Saxo-Society Orchestra and the Jazz Demons band.
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good-looking men on there and that got to be tenuous. And Mr. Whatley was
very careful about keeping these men always under control. They started to
pack up and leave, go. And the [white] men came around in a menacing
fashion and said, “Play a song, play a song real fast. Play a song, you hear
me?” There was a stasis there. And my father then turned around, came back,
picked up the sticks and played a piece da-ra-da-ta-ta-ta-ta. And he does it so
well: Bu dididup bup bup bup bup. Bididup bup bup bup bup pow. That was
it, boom, and was finished. Then, they all left and he had satisfied them.
When I first heard this as a young person, I thought, He should have
gotten up just like everybody else and gotten off that stage; that's typical of
my father. Isn't that amazing? When I heard him tell this story to my children
in Philadelphia – I was standing in the doorway and we were watching him tell
the same stories he had told me – I thought, How brave of him to turn
around and to satisfy the anger of those people and then to turn around with
a certain amount of dignity and leave.
Entrevistadora: He satisfied it on his terms.
Sanchez: On his terms. That’s right. And not on my terms. When you’re
young, you always want your parents to be what you are about. I think music
was… I think that many of the men at that particular time who could not, in
a sense, realize some of their dreams, I think they had to at some point make
use of what it was that they were doing. For instance, I start in Does Your
House Have Lions? a section about my father. I say, in his voice, “I was a
southern Negro man.” My father never left being a southern Negro man.
Although he has spent more than forty-some years, fifty-some years in a place
called New York City. It formed him. It malformed him. It framed him in a
certain way of looking at the world. He was wise enough to understand
something, I think, however. He didn't want our eyes to be framed in that
same manner and so he brought us north.
Ceremony of Old Men
Sanchez: [My father is] Wilson L. Driver and I was named Wilsonia Benita
Driver after my father because they expected a boy and a girl came. So the
sisters in the church named me Wilsonia, after [him] which is quite southern.
But I wanted to say about the music, too, for Black males in the south, their
friendship also tied in with what they did outside of school with the music,
was their salvation. In addition to that, the music was informed by the men
who played it. It was a complete male occupation. There were no female
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singers in there. There were no female musicians in that. You see my father –
and most of those men who played – were school teachers. It was an
interesting kind of association.
The spirituality was – I hope you don't take it wrong – but it was the
spirituality of playing poker every Saturday night; the spirituality of travelling
together in the south and experiencing all of those terrible things that they
did and surviving it; the spirituality of getting in a car and driving up to New
York City for the World's Fair; the spirituality of, in a sense, surviving, of
being. I had another thought. My father, in my head, learned how to stay with
those men. He learned how to be loyal to those men. There was a fantastic
sense of loyalty that was exhibited amongst them.
My father became ill in '94 and he had an operation for an
aneurysm…When he finally was able to get up, he went and sat in the livingroom by the balcony, by the door, and his friends, his male friends came in – I
call it the ceremony of old men. They walked in there. They brought the
oranges. They brought the cigars that he couldn't smoke at that time. Looked
around at me to see if I was really watching this. I saw it. I'm sitting off on
the side in the dining-room watching this. They came and sat down and began
to tell the dirty jokes in a low voice, you know, and said, “You're not sick,
Driver. What's your problem? We know you're just acting.” They did that
every day. And, you see, I understood his survival and his recovery. His
recovery came from those men making that trek, every day, with the same
oranges, the same cigars, the newspapers.
Malcolm X and the Nation of Islam
Sanchez: I'm not a revisionist. People say, “Oh, I just loved Malcolm! Oh, by
golly, by gee! Everything he said and did we followed…” That’s not true.
Most people ducked and dodged Malcolm, myself included. Most of us called
Malcolm every possible name. Like America, we called him racist, too. Yes,
we did. Myself included. I was in New York CORE [Congress of Racial
Equality]. We thought we were probably the baddest things going on the
planet Earth. I'd say we considered ourselves the most progressive and radical
of the civil rights groups.
Malcolm sent a directive out to all of us that said simply, to the [civil
rights] organizations: you cannot call a rally in Harlem without me. I am
Harlem. [We thought] “This man wants to intrude.” And he did intrude.
Every time we had a rally, he came right there with his bodyguards, whatever,
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with the Fruit of Islam. Came right up, got on that platform and spoke.
When he spoke more people came, of course, you see, so it should have been
to our benefit that this was the case. [But] we were very much into being
separate with our ideologies.
One day, [at one of Malcolm X’s public speeches] I was standing
there – on the islands – you know the islands on 7th Avenue in the middle of
the street. Standing there because I could see that way. I was really tired and it
was one of those gray, cloudy days. It was so gray and cloudy that you could
see the yellow and reds of the buildings in New York. I'm standing there
watching. I looked at Malcolm and I saw the reds on him. He started to talk.
You know how you're going to pull down a Venetian blind before the sun
comes in and you don't do it in time and some sun comes in? And I kind of
jumped like that and I looked and looked. I kept saying, No, I can't listen to
him because this is just racist. Every time he'd say something I'd back up.
Finally, he was coming down from the platform. I jumped off the island, ran
down. I'm so small I can really inch through things and really got around
some of the bodyguards and got right up in his face and said, “Mr. Malcolm
X, I don't agree with everything that you said.” And he looked at me with that
smile. And he said, “Oh yes, sister, one day you will,” and just smiled.
People talk about how harsh that man was and there he was so gentle.
I always wonder about the country – how the country so willingly killed
people who were creative or who cut through what I call class-gender-color,
because the most important thing I learned about Malcolm is that he was
cutting through class, color, and gender. White students constantly followed
him around asking him questions. All of us did.
Entrevistadora: You've talked about how significant Malcolm was for you
and I know that you spent time in the Nation of Islam. What was your
connection with the Nation?
Sanchez: Most of the writers I know, who were very progressive, at some
point touched on Islam. Now you have to understand this – Islam, or the
Nation, was never viewed as a religious organization. It was viewed as a
political organization. Some of you might not understand that. It was not
religious. And for the people who went in there, it was not about religion. It
was about the politics. They challenged the country. They had schools. They
had businesses. They had big meetings, you know? Religion was like an aside.
When I went in there, I was a very busy woman. Some of the people
said, “You must now stop being busy.” I said, “No, first of all, I have children,
I have to work; so I can't give up being a professor.” They said, “We mean all
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this traveling that you do.” And I said, “Well, no. Because that's how I’m able
to take care of a lot of people that I take care of and my family, too.” So that
was a bone of contention. But the other bone of contention is that they had
what you called MGT [Muslim Girls Training] classes for women where you
learn how to be a woman. And you learn about, you know, how to
cook…whatever.
I memorized all the lessons. They’re not difficult lessons, you know.
But I was in this beginning class forever. I mean, I saw people come in and I
saw people leave. I saw some of my students come in and they left. And
finally, it was punishment, because they said, “You are not a Muslim,” is what
they said.
[Later] they allowed me to teach a class ostensibly about poetry.
Sisters came in that class, however, and sat and looked at me and said, “I have
four babies. I do not want to have another one.” I am teaching haiku, tanka,
cinquain, blank verse, villanelle and I'm looking up at the young woman and
in the process I write a poem about contraceptives. I'm not going to teach on
it, right? But, I write this poem and read it slowly, softly and look up.
In this poem are all the different methods that one can use because it
seemed to me you could not look at someone who has gone insane in front
of your eyes and not be helpful. So my classes ended up being huge because I
was teaching poetry but I started to talk about women just getting big because
they sat at home, had babies and watched the idiot box. I started to
recommend books. I brought in books, and said, “Read this.” It seemed to
me, to be a true Muslim woman you had to be educated. You had to
understand that you are raising children and you cannot have children glued
to TV sets, you see.
And then people started to write this fantastic poetry in that
workshop. People began to… Well, the problem was that people began to ask
questions. Actually, that was a problem. I finally said, “Ask me the questions –
don't go outside – and I'll try to answer them.” One of the ministers finally
said to me as I passed by one day, “I hear you’re causing an insurrection in
MGT.” And I said, “No. What I'm trying to do is to keep the Nation sane.
Because, if the women are insane, the Nation will be insane.”
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Creation of Poems
Entrevistadora: How do you write poems? What is your process?
Sanchez: I really think when you begin to write you go into a zone. I think
the whole process, though, is about finally when I begin to say, “I'm going to
write this book,” or “I'm going to write these poems” and I get into that zone
and everything I see, then, becomes part of that poem. Everything that I do,
everything someone else says to me becomes part of the poem, too. The eyes
become sharpened. You know, the nose sharpens. The mouth sharpens. The
hands, the fingers – you know what I'm saying? – become very sharp.
Everybody I touch I take something back from them.
If I could draw a picture of me I would think that there would be,
when I'm creating, a white light around me, or a yellow light around my head,
someplace. Because I feel very much connected beyond this earth. I don't
even feel like I'm part of this earth. I mean I get in the house and the house is
there but I'm not even in the house. I'm not even in my study. I'm not even in
my bed. I think it's very difficult for people to live with artists. I really do.
When I want to write, when I'm writing, I really don't want to cook dinner. I
really don't want to wash dishes. I really don't want to go down and put the
clothes in the washing machine. I really don't want to hear someone talk
about their homework. I really don't want to have my husband talk about, you
know, like, “Well what do you think about the following?” I really don't want
to hear it. I don't want to go to bed when he says come to bed, but I go to
bed. But I get up. I get up about twelve-thirty when he's sleeping, when the
children are sleeping, when the house is sleeping and when only, only the
songs dripping from the walls – you know what I'm saying? – are there to be
caught.
I get out, close the door softly, go downstairs and put some tea on
and I'm standing there and I hear the music in the house and I start smiling.
I'm alive. I am happy. I am healthy. I am loving. I am at peace. I know there’s a
God. There’s a Creator. I know there are ancestors. I know that they exist,
that they are around me. I know that I’m holy. I know that they’re a lot of
people who are holy on this earth. I know that the earth will be saved. I know
that we will save the earth. All of that just converges right there as you write.
And there’s such a joy, such a joy.
12 “Sister Ella” is Ella Baker (1903-1986), a key organizer of the civil rights movement and guiding light
of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). “Sister Rose” (1930-2004) is
Rosemarie Freeney Harding, activist historian and writer.
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The Black Arts Movement
Entrevistadora: I want to go back to this period that we lived through in
many ways together in the 1960s, that we call the Black Arts Movement, the
Black Consciousness Movement, The Black Renaissance, where there was a
whole flowering of great artistic creativity connected up with great political
creativity. How did living in, and through, and with that period affect you in
ways that we might call spiritual, or religious, or in terms of your sense of the
meaning of your life and the meaning of life itself ?
Sanchez: You know, I am probably amazed a little bit that we are alive today.
I am amazed that we’re even sane today.
Entrevistadora: If we are. Or, when we are!
Sanchez: Oh, I think we are. We understand insanity, I think, the way that
people of color do and so we use it accordingly. I think that what that
flowering was, and that blossoming was, and what those voices were – all
those voices raised at the same time from MLK to Malcolm, to all the poets,
to all the workers. From Fannie Lou, from you – you know what I’m saying?
– Sister Ella, Sister Rose . All of these people were perhaps in different
places, with maybe a little difference in ideology. But there was the same
undercurrent there. The sub-text was freedom. The sub-text and the spirit
was freedom,. We were saying it differently, perhaps, in these different
corners, in the north and the south, right?
But at the core was that deep respect we had for each other, whether
we were doing it in the same fashion or not. I think probably, what we heard,
finally, was a different music that made up the one major song, the Freedom
Song. Right? Sometimes, the music that I was singing was a hard jazz sound,
you know? It was Coltrane at the height of him going from the lyric, the
lyrical: dan dan, da dan dan, da dan dan, da dan dan – to all of a sudden I turned
around, one day on stage he went, airrhhhahahaa, you know. And I was amazed
by it and had to stand back, but had to understand it was still part of that
music. Because in making that music on the stage, people heard. Because
people were asleep. So you were not just on stage saying in a nice fashion,
“Now let me tell you something about slavery, perhaps,” whatever. You had to
go, “[Screaming] Do you know what kind of society we're living in?! Do you
know what this economic system is?!” Your voice couldn't be always this
modulated kind of thing it had to go A-A-A-H! I had to begin at some point
to make a decision about what my voice would be, but also make a decision
about what truth is.
136
The point is simply that I began to question in our movement some
of the things that were going on. I began to ask questions and I began to
question the role of men, if you remember. At the beginning [of the Black
Arts Movement] I was probably the only woman poet out there with all those
men and they treated me as an equal. I took chances. I got up on a stage and
people said women don't get on stages. Well, I got up on stage with all the
men. I remember once in San Francisco, some white women in Berkeley
invited me over and their first question was “How do you do this?” I said,
“What do you mean?” They said, “How do you get up on stages with men
and hold your own?” I thought, and I said to myself, because we've always
done it. From research I had learned that Black women had always done that.
This is not alien to us, to our psyche. We have always done this kind of thing.
No one had talked about it, though. No one had, in a sense explored it, or
even celebrated the work that we had done because it seemed very natural. It
didn't seem unnatural to me to do this.
But something happened at some point. We got relegated, some of us
[women] poets, to just cultural workers and not necessarily thinkers. I
remember when we first started we were all on stage, the so-called thinkers,
we all had equal places but at some point there was a period of “You are now
cultural workers.” That was interesting and I used to think about that. I used
to say, “Now hold it. We're all [thinkers].” I mean, before you say a poem,
there are thoughts that come behind it. But it is the relegating to an arena of
what I call “just a cultural arena” where you are an inspiration to people.
There is nothing wrong with being an inspiration but there's something
wrong if you don't want to also give people the credit for having ideas, you
see. Ideas are not just with the political scientists, you know. Do you know
what I am saying? Or just for historians, or just for social scientists, or just for
sociologists.
That transpired from about late sixty-nine to that strange period that
we went into in the seventies: Black men learning from America, you see,
what this patriarchy was all about. What happened is that some of these
things came up. What I tried to do though, was I tried not to cause difficulties
in the time when I thought we were at our weakest. The only time that I
would raise issues was when I thought that at some point we had strength
enough to face those issues.
13 Amiri Baraka (b. 1934), major American poet, playwright and essayist, was one of the creators of the
Black Arts Movement.
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Advice for Young Artists
Entrevistadora: I wonder if you could say a little bit about mentoring, Sonia.
Sanchez: I think when you finally understand what you have, it is incumbent
upon you to pass it on. So, if you are a decent teacher, you've got to train
decent young people to be teachers, too. The same thing happens when you
write and you're a poet. My point is always to not feel as if the younger poets
are in competition with us. The problem I have with slam, you know, is that it
is competitive. Young people get up and they don't listen to the poet who has
gone before. They only listen for one thing – the applause. How much
applause are they giving that poet? You see them sitting there writing, reworking so, therefore, they can get more applause. It is not about what we
used to do. When [Amiri] Baraka and I got on stage and he said something,
I said “Whoa.” And I'd come right back. The musicians did that, back and
forth but you were then building on each other's poems, and the audience was
building on what you were doing, too. So there was that community that was
going on. When I see the young people up there now, they are up there like
they have to win. There is one winner, one winner at a slam.
Entrevistadora: What's a slam?
Sanchez: Where the kids all do their poetry and then there's a winner and
you get money for it. The audiences decide who's the winner. Like I tell my
students who are rappers, I say to them, “Never let the audience determine
what's right. If you do that, you lose control over your craft. You lose control
over the images. You are the poet, you know.”
So, I give the example of Coltrane. You know, Coltrane took his
music to another point. I was part of an audience at the Village Vanguard
when he came out with his back to the audience and he was taking My
Favorite Things so far up we went woh-woh-woh-woh-woh, hold it. We
picked up our drinks, you know, had to drink. It was too much. We weren't
ready for it but he said, you are not going to control what I play, what I create.
That's the way of the creator. You cannot let an audience control what you
create. You can say, “I hope you appreciate this. I'll give it to you with love
and affection. I hope you are ready for it,” right? If they are ready for it then
it's that give and take, that beautiful thing that happens, you know, that
happens in an audience. If the audience is not ready, however, the audience
might be ready a year later. I heard Coltrane a year later in my kitchen there in
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Harlem, the radio played the regular version of My Favorite Things and all of
a sudden he did the second version of it, or the third version that was out
there. I was saying, “I've got it. I've got it.” I had it. I was ready for it, you see.
We mustn't ever stop our forward movement as an artist because we
want to win something. That's important. And I try to tell my students who
are rappers that these rap lyrics are part of a great poetry tradition and it is
important that you at some point say something much deeper than what
sometimes goes on. You can take [the audience] there. You can take them
there. You can make them go there, if you are willing to take the chance
yourself. If you want to take the easy way out then you'll stand up and you'll
be like all the other rappers. What I've tried to do, I hope, and some of the
other people I know who have been poeting, too, what we try to do as writers
is that we take people sometimes to a place that they don't want to go.
Sometimes even to a place that I haven't wanted to go.
Selected Bibliography
SANCHEZ, Sonia. Homecoming. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1969.
__________. We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans. New
York: Bantam, 1973.
__________. A Blues Book for Blue Black Magic Women. Detroit:
Broadside Press, 1974.
__________. We a BaddDDD People. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1974.
__________. Homegirls and Handgrenades. New York: Thunder’s Mouth
Press, 1984.
__________. I’ve Been a Woman: New and Selected Poems. Chicago: Third
World Press, 1985
__________. Under a Soprano Sky. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 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 Drums. Boston: Beacon
Press, 1998.
__________. Shake Loose My Skin. Boston: Beacon Press, 2000
__________. Morning Haiku. Boston: Beacon Press, 2010.
__________. I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and
Other Plays. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010
139
Apendice: Informação adicional: Quem é Sônia Sanchez?
Sonia Sanchez é escritora, educadora e militante dos direitos humanos
há mais de cinqüenta anos. Poeta e dramaturga célebre, Sanchez surgiu como
uma das vozes influentes no
[Movimento Artes
Negras] dos anos 1960 e 1970 nos Estados Unidos. O
representou um momento especialmente significativo na história da literatura
Americana, descrito por critico Larry Neal como “o irmão estético e espiritual
do conceito de Poder Negro.” O movimento se caracterizou por uma
literatura e arte de protesto social que ofereceu uma critica vibrante ao status
quo e visões alternativas de justiça racial e econômica. Entre 1965 e 1975,
centenas de organizações populares de arte se desenvolveram em
comunidades negras por toda parte dos Estados Unidos, inspirados pelo
nacionalismo cultural e político de Poder Negro e procurando explorar o uso
criativo da literatura, da dança, da música e de outras formas de expressão
relacionadas com a luta pelos direitos humanos e cíveis dos Afro-Americanos.
Sonia Sanchez estava no centro dessa florescência criativa, junto com
escritores como Amiri Baraka, Gwendolyn Brooks, Haki Madhubuti,
Etheridge Knight, June Jordan, Hoyt Fuller, Nikki Giovanni, Askia
Muhammad Touré e Mari Evans. Profa. Sanchez também ajudou na fundação
do movimento com a criação e o estabelecimento de programas de estudos
Afro-Americanos. Também, integrou o corpo docente do San Francisco State
College quando da criação do primeiro departamento de Estudos Afros no
pais.
Sanchez tem publicado mais de vinte livros de poesia, drama e
literatura infantil, e foi editora de duas antologias. Recebeu o
o
, a
,eo
e, entre outras honrarias. Em 2011, foi nomeada e laureada poeta
da cidade de Filadélfia, Pensilvânia onde reside.
Ela nasceu Wilsonia Benita Driver, em Birmingham, Alabama, em
1934, e foi criada pela avó (a quem Sanchez chamou de “Mama”), e por
outros parentes, após a morte da mãe, quando ela tinha somente um ano de
idade. Ainda menina, Sanchez se mudou para Nova Iorque, para morar no
Harlem com o pai e a madrasta. O pai era professor de bateria e trabalhou na
cidade como músico e funcionário de uma rede de lanchonetes. Sanchez
14 Tradução da
desta entrevista. Traduzido pela entrevistadora. Esta entrevista foi realizada por Rachel E. Harding e Vincent G. Harding. Rachel E. Harding a transcreveu.
140
recebeu o diploma de bacharel em Ciências Políticas no Hunter College em
1955 e fez pós-graduação na New York University. No início da década de
60, Sanchez se engajou no movimento crescente de direitos cívis, trabalhando
por um tempo como ativista com o
[CORE].
No contexto do seu trabalho com o CORE ela conheceu o Malcolm X e,
embora no inicio não tenha abraçado as perspectivas dele, mais tarde foi
profundamente influenciada pelo seu nacionalismo negro e também por sua
visão ampla do anti-racismo como uma questão global de direitos humanos.
Profa. Sanchez fez parte do corpo docente de oito universidades e se
aposentou pela Temple University em 1999 com o titulo
. Recentemente, alem das suas próprias publicações, ela
tem colaborado com artistas do hip-hop – poetas e rappers – que são, de certa
forma, os herdeiros da tradição do
de uma poesia
rítmica, incisiva, com forte critica política. Através da proliferação de sua
obra, do ensino e da orientação de escritores jovens e artistas do hip-hop, da
sua militância pelos direitos das mulheres, dos gays e lésbicas, trabalhadores,
dos imigrantes e das pessoas de descendência Africana pelo mundo inteiro,
Profa. Sanchez continua utilizado sua arte como ferramenta de mudança
social.