At 90 years old, poet, author, activist, and groundbreaking educator Sonia Sanchez is a giant of literature. She’s authored dozens of books, including “Homecoming” and “We a BaddDDD People” and plays like “Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free Us?” She was Philadelphia’s first-ever poet laureate, from 2012–2014. Although she stands less than 5 feet tall, Sanchez’s legacy casts a shadow thousands of feet long.
On Monday, Dec. 9, Sanchez, a 1955 graduate of Hunter College, returned to her alma mater to spend the day visiting students in classes, and the evening being honored for her contributions to literature, higher education, and the world at large. The event, part of Hunter’s “American Voices” series, featured orators in their own right paying homage to Sanchez exactly three months after her 90th birthday, and took place just hours before news spread that Sanchez’s friend and fellow member of the Black Arts movement, Nikki Giovanni, passed away the same day at 81 years old.
“When I [began] Black studies at a place called San Francisco State, I met sister Nikki and she had moved to New York City,” Sanchez said during a conversation with the AmNews the following day. “She was just beginning to write, and one of the things she asked of the people who were handling her (was) would they let her travel with me so she could see what we were doing at that point.
“I don’t like to separate all of us. Nikki came in as a younger member [of Black Arts], continuing that motion and movement, and began to teach like many of us did. She was very much involved with this whole idea that African Americans had a heritage in terms of writing and doing the work that needed to be done in this place called America.”
As a member of the Black Arts movement that emerged in the 1960s and counted poets Amiri Baraka, Larry Neal, and Gwendolyn Brooks among its membership, Sanchez has dedicated her life to ensuring that African American history is studied in the United States. She taught the country’s first collegiate Black studies course at San Francisco State University in 1968, and within a year, also taught the first course about Black women at the University of Pittsburgh.
“I was traveling every year to a new school because they didn’t like what we were doing, but we persevered,” Sanchez said. “What the Black Arts did is that we said we not only have intelligence, we also will challenge you in a place called a university.”
Matt Capowski photos
Sanchez added that “when we came in and brought in Black studies, then you brought in Puerto Rican studies, brought in women’s studies. People paid attention and they began to imitate us.”
Sanchez taught for more than 40 years, covering a range of literature, from the Black folklore of unnamed authors originating from the time of legal slavery on American soil, to poets and novelists of the Harlem Renaissance.
Sanchez is a native of Birmingham, Ala. Before becoming an educator herself, she was living in New York City and an undergraduate student at Hunter College. At Hunter, she overcame a stutter and, in the process, developed the musical cadence she’s become known for.
“Before I asked a question, I learned how to recite it slowly in my head first,” Sanchez recalled. “I broke up the lines, and in breaking up the lines, it taught me how to read my poetry with emphasis. I brought song into my poetry also because when you sing, you don’t stutter.”
Hunter’s celebration, “An Evening with Sonia Sanchez,” began with tributes from poets Ama Birch and Rachel Eliza Griffiths, and Sanchez’s friend Quincy Troupe, author of several books, including “The Autobiography of Miles Davis” and “The Pursuit of Happyness.”
Troupe, who was feeling under the weather, sent in a pre-recorded video of himself reading a poem dedicated to John Coltrane, one of Sanchez’s favorite musicians. Griffiths, a 2021 Paterson Poetry Prize winner, recited a poem written in tribute to Sanchez and shared an account of meeting Sanchez for the first time as a new poet, and leaving with an assignment Sanchez is known for giving all of her students: Go for one week without saying anything negative about anyone.
Birch’s opening tribute poignantly encapsulated the essence of Sanchez’s vision and delivery as a poet and activist. “She’s impressive because she is human, but she is also a revolutionary, producing abstract and avant-garde lyrical poetry that speaks truth to power, whether on the page or the stage,” Birch said. “The rhythms presented in Sonia Sanchez’s poetry embody percussion as a communication tool. The syncopated rhythms — the use of song, repetition, rhyme, and alliteration — transport the reader into an experience of her revolutionary vision that challenges the American paradigms to be reimagined.”
In her address, Sanchez cracked jokes, suggested that she get up and dance, shared anecdotes from her life, and recited five poems from her extensive catalog. She switched effortlessly between rhythmically running off words at a danceable pace and stretching out her syllables in melodic singsong interludes, without missing a beat.
Sanchez operates with a gratitude and lifelong enthusiasm about learning that extends beyond the classroom. “When we came into the knowledge of what had been left out of herstory and history, we would be up at night studying that, writing it down. I would put my head down on the table and cry,” Sanchez said.
With a career that includes dozens of awards, and poetry readings in nearly every continent, Sanchez said she has found the most pride in the searching she’s done on behalf of her ancestors.
“I am most proud of finding places like the Schomburg (Center for Research in Black Culture) and Ms. Hudson who was there, who gave me guidance and gave me books, and sent me down to 125th Street where [Lewis H.] Michaux’s bookstore was … When I was ready to teach, they had given me every book that they had about our herstory and history.”
During Monday’s event, Sanchez ended her speech by giving the audience the same prompt she’s used to dismiss countless classes over four decades: “For one week, don’t say anything negative about anyone. Can you, for one week, move on this Earth and not say anything bad about anybody?”