Sonia
Sanchez was born Wilsonia Benita Driver on September
9, 1934, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her mother died a
year later, and Sanchez lived with her paternal grandmother
and other relatives
for several years. In 1943 she moved to Harlem with
her sister to live with their father and his third
wife. She earned a B.A. in political science from
Hunter College in 1955. She also did postgraduate
work at New York University and studied poetry with
Louise Bogan. Sanchez formed a writers' workshop in
Greenwich Village, attended by such poets as Amiri
Baraka (LeRoi Jones), Haki R. Madhubuti (Don L. Lee),
and Larry Neal. Along with Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni,
and Etheridge Knight, she formed the "Broadside
Quartet" of young poets, introduced and promoted
by Dudley Randall. She married and divorced Albert
Sanchez, a Puerto Rican immigrant whose surname she
has used when writing, and the poet Etheridge Knight,
with whom she had three children.
During the early 1960s she was an integrationist,
supporting the philosophy of the Congress of Racial
Equality (CORE). But after considering the ideas of
Black Muslim leader Malcolm X, who believed blacks
would never be truly accepted by whites in the United
States, she focused more on her black heritage from
a separatist point of view. Sanchez began teaching
in the San Francisco area in 1965 and was a pioneer
in developing black studies courses at what is now
San Francisco State University, where she was an instructor
from 1968 to 1969. In 1971 she joined the Nation of
Islam, but by 1976 she had left the Nation, largely
because of its repression of women.
Sonia Sanchez is the author of more than a dozen books
of poetry, including Shake Loose My Skin: New and
Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1999); Like the Singing
Coming Off the Drums: Love Poems (1998); Does your
house have lions? (1995), which was nominated for
both the NAACP Image and National Book Critics Circle
Award; Wounded in the House of a Friend (1995); Under
a Soprano Sky (1987); Homegirls & Handgrenades
(1984), which won an American Book Award from the
Before Columbus Foundation; I've Been a Woman: New
and Selected Poems (1978); A Blues
Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1973); Love Poems
(1973); Liberation Poem (1970); We a BaddDDD People
(1970); and Homecoming (1969).
Her published plays are Black Cats Back and Uneasy
Landings (1995), I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue
When I Ain't (1982), Malcolm Man/Don't Live Here No
Mo' (1979), Uh Huh: But How Do It Free Us? (1974),
Dirty Hearts '72 (1973), The Bronx Is Next (1970),and
Sister Son/ji (1969). Her books for children include
A Sound Investment and Other Stories (1979), The Adventures
of Fat Head, Small Head, and Square Head (1973), and
It's a New Day: Poems for Young Brothas and Sistuhs
(1971). She has also edited two anthologies: We Be
Word Sorcerers: Twenty-five Stories by Black Americans
(1973) and Three Hundred Sixty Degrees of Blackness
Comin'' at You (1971).
Among the many honors she has received are the Community
Service Award from the National Black Caucus of State
Legislators, the Lucretia Mott Award, the Outstanding
Arts Award from the Pennsylvania Coalition of 100
Black Women, the Peace and Freedom Award from Women
International League for Peace and Freedom (WILPF),
the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in
the Humanities, a National Endowment for the Arts
Award, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts.
Sonia Sanchez has lectured at more than five hundred
universities and colleges in the United States and
had traveled extensively, reading her poetry in Africa,
Cuba, England, the Caribbean, Australia, Nicaragua,
the People’s Republic of China, Norway, and Canada.
She was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University,
where she began teaching in 1977, and held the Laura
Carnell Chair in English there until her retirement
in 1999. She lives in Philadephia.
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