About : standard furniture diana collection
Title : standard furniture diana collection
standard furniture diana collection
shockley: good afternoon. more then thirty years ago the project on the history of black writing began its investment in preserving and recovering literature by writers of african descent. today we remain committed to creating critical spaces for teaching, learning, researching and presenting black
literature both in the u.s. and globally. we are, therefore, very pleased to present the seventh webinar of black poetry after the black arts movement, a summer institute funded by the national endowment for the humanities. our special guest today is the poet sonia sanchez, one of the founding poets
of the black arts movement, and one of the most inspiring, challenging, nurturing and game-changing writers of our age. i am evie shockley, associate professor of english at rutgers university, new brunswick. before we get started a quick logistical note: we would like to invite you to interact
with our guest today via the chat tool that you will find in the menu at the upper part of your webinar window. we hope that you will use it to provide feedback for the poet, as a place for virtual applause and encouragement. you might start by using the chat window to provide a special virtual welcome to our guest today, the poet
sonia sanchez. sonia sanchez ... poet, playwright,activist, mother, professor ... is an internationally known figure and one of the most important writers of our times. i don't make this claim lightly. there are many ways to measure importance and professor sanchez exceeds the mark in all of them.
if we think of productivity and longevity, we note that she is the author of over sixteen books of poetry, plays and prose, beginning with homecoming published with dudley randall's broadside press in 1969, and most recently including morning haiku published by beacon press in 2010. shake loose my skin published in 1999 offers
a rich sampling of the first thirty years of her work as a poet, and her plays are collected in the 2010 volume i′m black when i′m singing, i′m blue when i ain′t and other plays, edited by jacqueline wood. her editorial work includes the 2014 publication of s.o.s. - calling all blackpeople: a black arts movement reader, which she co-editedwith professors john bracey and
jim smethurst. if we think of importance in terms of recognition from the literary establishment ... which we do, and we don't, we note that professor sanchez has received a host of honors, including the national endowment for the artsfellowship, the 1984 lucretia mott award,
a pew fellowship in the arts for 1992-93, the langston hughes poetry award in '99, poetry society of america's 2001 robert frost medal, and the 2009 robert creeley award, among many others. her collection homegirls and handgrenades won the 1985 american book award. she is currently a scholar in residence at the schomburg center for research in
black culture, an institutional treasure of and for black writing, and a place of great significance for professor sanchez herself ... where we are privileged to be holding today's conversation. if we look at her importance in terms of political impact, we might point to some of her path-breaking moves. professor sanchez was, i believe, the
first academic to teach a course in black studies, in support of the 1960s student movement atsan francisco state university. likewise, she was oneof the first black writers who was neither a member of the lgbtq community, nor hiv-positive herself, to write a book concerning the impact of hiv/aids on black people. her commitment to women's liberation,peace,
and racial justice takes many forms, including her service as a sponsor of the women's international leaguefor peace and freedom, a board member of madre, and as a member of thegranny peace brigade. she has been recognized with the 1989 peace and freedom award from the women's international league for peace and freedom, and as a ford freedom scholar
by the charles h. wright museum of african american history. if we think about her influence, the vertical and horizontal reach of her work, it's hard to know where to begin and impossible to know where to end. professor sanchez has lectured at over 500 universities and colleges in the united states, and has traveled extensively
reading her poetry in africa, cuba, england, the caribbean, australia, europe, nicaragua, the peoples republic of china and canada. she was temple university's first presidential fellow and also held a laura carnell chair in english there. her students are legion, and the students of her work are even more numerous.
she is one of the few black writers to have had an academic journal dedicated to her work, as well as the work of the black arts movement generally: bma: the sonia sanchez literary review. her respect and renown are renewed with each generation, notably including the hip-hop generation. we have two examples of her legacy at
least from within this webinar series alone as she was cited by both jessica care moore and sharan strange... and i believe by some of the other presenters as well ... as a mentor, a model and a crucial supporter of their work. if we think about courage, wisdom, generosity, humility, ferocity,
persistence, beauty and intelligence, we think about sonia sanchez. if we think about critical social analysis, immersion in black history, provocative innovative art and a love of what is human in all of us, we think of sonia sanchez. professor sanchez has said that she writes to quote "help bring forth the truth about
the world, to tell the truth about the black condition as i see it and therefore to offer a black woman's view of theworld." she goes on "i cannot tell the truth about anything unless i confess to being a student growing and learning something new everyday." in that spirit of growth and truth and with great admiration and love, i am delighted to welcome professor
sonia sanchez. greetings sister sonia. sanchez: ah greetings my dear sister,so good seeing you. shockley: so good to have you here,i would love it if you could begin our hour with a reading of your work. sanchez: okay, one of the thingsi was going to read... and you will probably have to keep the time, ok? ... was does your house have lions, but i would like to begin simply by
telling a story about my dad,who was ill... and i said to him when i would go up weekends, i'm writing a book about your son, my brother, wilson. and my father was stretched on the couch and he leaned up and said "well you can't write about him, unless you write about me." and he said "and i hope you get me right this time,"and i went "whoa ... ok, ok, dad i hear you."
and what he was saying simply is that the early poems i'd written to my father talked always about what a ladies man he was, ... you know, how many women he had. ... and what that really meantto me on many levels. so i would like to begin with a poemfor my father that i wrote in the 1960s: "how sad it must be to love so many women to need so many black
perfumed bodies weeping underneath you. when i remember all those nights i filled my mind with long wars between short sighted trojans & greeks while you slapped some wide hips about in your pvt dungeon,
when i remember your deformity i want to do something about your makeshift manhood. i guess that is why on meeting your sixth wife, i cross myself with her confessionals."
and that's the hard poem... so the great thing is that i asked my dad that day what did he mean, and he said simply that the problem is that i didn't realize that the only women heever loved was my mother, and when she died all the other women were accoutrements. so i began to question him that day,in no uncertain terms, so i will begin to read
does your house have lions. this is a poem that has been staged as a dramatic work. people have performed it as their senior thesis in a place called philadelphia ... and they had three people as my brother; an african-american, a latino brother, and a white brother. so it was really very interestingand fascinating. so, anyway, the poem is in rhyme royal, and
i will begin. rhyme royal for those of you who write poetry, the rhyme scheme is ab ab bb cc. this is the sister's voice. "this was a migration unlike the 1900s of black men and women coming north for jobs. freedom. life. this was a migration to begin to bend a father's heart again to birth seduction from the past
to repay desertion at last. imagine him short and black thin mustache draping thin lips imagine him country and exact thin body, underfed hips watching at this corral of battleships and bastards. watching for forget and remember. dancing his pirouette. and he came my brother at seventeen
recruited by birthright and smell grabbing the city by the root with clean metallic teeth. commandant and infidel pirating his family in their cell and we waited for the anger to retreat and we watched him embrace the city andthe street first he auctioned off his legs. eyes. heart. in rooms of specific pain he specialized in generalize
learned newyorkese and all profane. enslaved his body to cocaine denied his father's signature damned his sister's overture. and a new geography greeted him the atlantic drifted from offshore to lick his wounds to give him slim transfusion as he turned changed wore a new waistcoat of solicitor
antidote to his southern skin ammunition for a young paladin and the bars. the glitter. the light discharging pain from his bygone anguish of young black boy scared of the night. sequestered on this new bank, he surveyed the fish sweet cargoes crowded with scales feverish with quick sales full sails of flesh searing the coastline of his acquiesce.
and the days rummaging his eyes and the nights flickering through a slit of narrow bars. hips. thighs. and his thoughts labeling him misfit as he prowled, pranced in the starlit city, coloring his days and nites with gluttony and praise andunreconciled rites." that's my brother coming north not to praise his family,
not to be in concert with his family, not to say, "hi dad, it's so good seeing you after all these years", but to damn his family. and he will proceed to do much damage, my brother,with his family because he was very angry, because his whole point as far as he was concerned was that he had come north in order to damn this northern family.
so, that was the part about my brother and the other part is my father's voice. the book is divided into four sections. the first sectionis the sister's voice, the second is thebrother's voice, the third is the father's voice,and the fourth section is family and ancestors, which ends the book. but my father then ... after i told him that i was indeed doing this ...
he began to talk about my mother, and he had never done that. he began to talk about his son's mother, he had never done that before. and as a consequence i was able to "take notes", sit up and listen and began to understand those things that never had been told to me. and this is the father's voice.
"the day he traveled to my daughter'shouse it was june. he cursed me with his morningnod of anger as he filtered his callous walk. skip. hop. feet slipshod from 125th street bars, face curled withodd reflections. the skin of a father isaccented in the sentence of the unaccented." then my father talks about himself. "i was a southern negro man playing music
married to a high yellow woman who lovedmy unheard face, who slept with me in nordic beauty. i prisoner since my birth to fear i unfashioned buried in an open grave of mornings unclapped with constant sight of masters fattened decked with mydiminished light." and then he talks about my mother his first wife: "this love. this first wife of mine, diedin childbirth
this face of complex lace exiled herbreath into another design, and i died becamewanderlust demanded recompense from friends formy heartbreak cursed the land for this new heartache put her away with a youthful pause never called her name again,wrapped my heart in gauze." and then i talk about him becoming the romeo i knew: "became romeo bound, applauded women
as i squeezed their syrup, drank theirstenciled face, danced between their legs,placed my swollen shank to the world, became man distilled early twentieth-century black manfossilled fulfilled by women things, foreclosing onmy life. mother where do i go before i arrive?" and then he talks aboutmy brother's mother: "she wasn't as beautiful as my first wife this ruby-colored girl insinuating herlimb
against my thigh positioning her wild-life her non-virginal smell as virginal herclimb towards me with slow walking heels mademe limp made me stumble, made my legs squint until i stopped, stepped inside herfootprint" and then he asks forgiveness: "i did not want to leave you son,this flame this pecan-colored festival requested me not my child, your sister. your mothercould not frame
herself as her mother and i absentee father, and i nightclub owner carefree did not heed her blood,did not see my girl's eyes shaved buckled down with southern thighs. now my seventy-eight years urge meon your land now my predator legs prey, broadcast no new nightmares no longer birdman of cornerstone comes, i come to collapse the past while bonfires burn up your orphan's mask
i sing a dirge of lost black southernmanhood this harlem man begging pardon,secreting old." how many minutes have we gone?shockley: about five minutes. sanchez: five minutes.and that's my father, you know who begins to tell me what happened and as a consequence then my brother will come down in the fourth section. i talk about my brother coming down to my house.
i give my father the peculiar role of talking about his son...and he did not even know what transpired, but he says simply that i was told ...i don't remember who, i think i was talking in his sister's house ... and he becomes the person chronicling something that he wasn't even there. and it was a chance that i took, but i wanted my father to
continue this dialog here. so i gave him all the information, that my brother came and he came cursing him again. and i finally turned to my brother and said "you're thirty years of age. you knowwhen you were seventeen, i said, 'ok'. when it was eighteen i said, 'yeah'.when you were twenty, i said you could continue to curse him,but your thirty now, stop it." you know all we know about our parents is that they do the best that they can do.
period, that's all. and he continued to curse and i would then shake him and slap him and we would fall on the floor, and i began to tell him about his mother. so then my brotherwould leave my house that sunday, and i will end with the brother's voice in the father's voice in two stanzas.
my brother will leave and go to his fathers house in new york and ask forgiveness. brother's voice: "there is nothing i do not comprehend i have become a collector of shouts hold my ears father, i have come to mend our hearts raise a glass celebrate rootout lyrical slaughters become youronly son devout
i have become a lover of sweet water i worship stone i will not betray you father." and the father's voice: "steady your hand old man do not trouble yourself with language stalk his wound he is listening to your corpuscles cradlethe clap and thunder of a new sound he has called your name and old teeth are found can you hold me son, as i rise from thiswhimper can you hear me son, as i cross overthis river."
and it is ... my father would call me that night and say "oh sonia, sonia! wilson came to the house and we hugged andhe's forgiven me, and i've forgiven him. he said,"oh its so good having a son, it's so good having my son back". i say "yeah, dad,it must be really great having a son". he said,"no no no no, you don't understand"... this is about twelve
o'clock at night ..."it's so good having a son". i say, "i can imagine dad. it is good having a son". and this is the last thing he said to me that night. and i got off the phone thinking he has never said it's so good having a daughter, but i was so glad that i was part of that reconciliation of father and son ... because it meant then,
that we were all reconciled together as a family. shockley: that is such an amazing poem,`and one of the things we might think about is the difficulty of writing something that is so hard, so difficult for your family ...and also a poem that touches on such a difficult subject culturally ... a subject that moves into areas of social taboo.
could you talk a little more about what work you wanted does your house have lions to do?" sanchez: my first move with this book was simply that when i saw the reconciliation i thought it was important to do that for many people. i've had students who've come to my office and said, "i have not been in
contact with father or my mother for twelve years" and i always ask why. when i ask all my students to doa short biographical statement, more and more there were the statements about,"i am not in contact with my father or my mother". you know, and i would write in red ... because you don't grade a biographical statement, "why not?" right, and they would come into my office
and say, "well you don't understand, professor sanchez, you know. you don't understand just how hard it is, and what this person did to me".and i say, "my dear sister (or my dear brother),what ever happened to you, happened to all of us. do you think ... do you think ...can you really think that this only happens to you?"i say, "who do you think you are, that you are that sacred,
that special? everything that has happened to you, has happened to all of us".and they kind of sit back and look at you, and i say, "so look, what we do have to do,and what i always say to you: you've got to forgive them. your life will not be what it should be until you forgive. and once you forgive them, then you can move on ...and then you're less prone to make mistakes with your children
or so when you have them." shockley: that is so true,and in your work there's this... this message of forgiveness, over the course of your oeuvre. maybe after a certain point in the early part of your work. sanchez: oh no,look when we did the big anthology s.o.s. calling all black people,everyone ... the discussion among us is that many of the
younger poets would not want some of the real curses, whatever.they wanted to show the poems that you know were, whatever. and so i said, "well look, i am eighty, right ... you know, and at the time i was seventy-nine ...i say"look, i am old enough for people to hear the 'mother fuckers',you know what i mean? but america needed ...but people needed to know ... and younger people need to know ...that we did
call people names. and we didn't call themnames because we didn't know how to write. i said to .... someone someplace said,"well, it's evident that you curse a lot." i said,"go back and tell me how many times i cursed ... or that i didn't curse ... a lot. in my book of poetry i can tell you the times that i cursed. i know the times i cursed,"i said. "but the point is simply ...
is that probably because you were youngand you hadn't learned the form." i said, "look, when i started to write, i studied with one of the greatest poets on this earth, louise bogan. and i absorbed everything that she said and read everything that shesuggested that we read. and one of the things that we did, that i did simply, at some point,is that i
knew how to write what we'd call "standard poetry", right?my first poems were "standard poems". there was not anything in it that said that i was black, brown, yellow, whatever, etc.but what happened to us is coltrane. what happened to us is coltrane and the jazz that came on and malcolm ... and they could not,coltrane when he went (high pitched sound).
i sat there ...and i am not a revisionist ... the first time he did that we were in a nightclub, and we all got nervous.and someone said, what is he doing,what is he doing, what is he doing?"i don't know i don't know what he does, but i came to hear(dun dun, da duh dun, dan dun da) and he is not doing it ... he is(high pitched noise) what is this? we didn't stay for thesecond set. we always stayed for the second set
anytime we were in a jazz joint,you know listening to the great jazz people. but, i was at home in my apartment ... with my faux leather chairs and this little black and white table .... the same tablei was sitting at when i heard malcolm had been assassinated... and this guy said i will now play you the different versions of coltrane. and he started out with my favorite thing (dun,
(dun, da duh dun, dan dun da). then he got to the last thingthat we had heard in the club, and i understood it. because it was three o'clock in the morning, i was writing, i was connected to the universe, and i said he said "fuck youuuuu!" he couldn't say it out loudon the stage. they were musicians.they relied, whatever.
but at that time everyonebodyhad learned that america was fucking us all, you know. screwing us all, whatever,and most people were not saying anything about it. i was in the black arts ...i was one of the original people helping to form the black studies. i organized the first course onthe black women. so all of those things were happening to me at some particular
point, and i realizedthat those musicians ... all those musicians who tookarabic names ... they took names from themiddle east ... who began to play music that simulated an eastern feel, but also music that leap out of the western constrict someplace else,and you had to ... so we decided that we were going toidentify. so that's what we did.so i said, "don't come to me with stupid questions, okay?"" i've taught forty years,
and i am usually very friendly," i said. "but you know you're not a kid, and you should study us as other people study us." and you had to say in that music ... when you did the musical pieces ... that, that was what washappening, period. and you put it down it might not have been as poetic as some of your other poems, but it was on target. but that music was hard music, i mean that
thing hit you in one ear and came out the other ear. and you were drunk, you were literally drunk with it.and it pounding, i would walk down the street humming it. everyone's looking at me,i'd be on the subway going [humming] and people would get up and move. [laughing] say, "what is wrong with this woman?"shockley: well, it was the music
for the times, your poetry was poetry for the times. sanchez: exactly. shockley: there are things thatmake a lot of us see those times returning in certain ways, right?" sanchez: oh yeah, they are. shockley: i want to ask you one of the questions that was sentin advance of the webinar. coming from suny potsdam,a professor james donahue has written, "more then a few of
my students in creative writing are interested in poetry as a means to social justice, but they're terrified about speaking out for fear of punishment from the schools, from their families, the communit. they feel powerless and especially trapped by fear of the economic situation, ... debt,loan debt and so forth. what advice would you give to students
who want to write to these times?" sanchez: well the simplest one is to get a pseudonym, and no one will know who youare. the other thing is that, my dear sisters and brothers ...you know i am talking to you now ...that one of the things that we had is that we had a man who came and spoke to us all. his name was malcolm, and he erased the fear that we all had.
you know, we were all in academe, we were all in schools. what you are fearing, at this point, happens to be things that they are laying on you. saying if you do this, this will happen toyou. parents told ... my father said to me,"don't you go to san francisco. and what are you going to start? black studies?black studies? my god,
sonia! you need not to go to california,san francisco." and he was saying that anything that had the name "black"attached to it was doomed to failure, was going to causeproblems ... and believe me it will cause problems. but are you telling me, my youngbrothers and my young sisters, that you are lesser then i?i am eighty-one years of age. how can you at your young age belesser then i? how can you at some point... when i went in to teach, i went in with a
"natural". and i said, "yeah, i got a natural. don't collapse." or i would wrap my head in a gele and i would go into the english department meetings with a gele on my head, and they would just look at me. but then i get on an airplane, and the flight attendants ... at that time they were called stewardesses ... who loved to dress. they would come and track me down and
said, "how did you do that? i want to wear that, that is beautiful." and so, at somepoint, what we were saying out loud to the country for the first time is that people imitated us. we who had been imitators of everybody else out there, now had people coming to us imitating us. we who wrote the poetry that we wrote, everybody else started imitating us ... the world! i went to
france, i went to paris, i went to london, i went to the caribbean. what kind of poetry were they writing? they were writing the poetry we were writing at this particular point, and i'm not saying you didn't write soft love poems. i wrote soft love poems, whatever, 'cause that is radical, that is progressive. but at the same time, that music ... because we said in our
introduction that the two people who set the tone for the black arts happened to been coltrane and malcolm. the irony of all of this is that their dead. when the whole thing comes together. and then what do you do? do you stop and say, "well they were the ones taking all the flack", and they were. right, now you can't take the flack anymore? so i sat up on stages and took the flack,
and i took many a flack. and you're right, i went from university to university. and my father use to say, "you're not going to get tenure if keep talking on." i said, "i can't teach any other way, unless i tell the truth", and i turned to my father and said, "you mean you don't want me to tell the truth about this country?" and he backed down at some point. and it's the only
thing that will save your lives, my dear sisters and brothers, to tell the truth. because there are other people out there black, white, green. purple, blue, brown who are also telling the truth. and so all you have to do is find that other group that you can fit into, and can still remain truth sayers on this earth.
shockley: and do it in collectivity. sanchez: in collectivity that's right. shockley: that's beautiful. part of what you're saying reminds me of something that we talked about earlier last week ... about the difference, the transformation in some of the elders. in terms of their reception of your work, from when they were first hit with it, didn't understand it in the same
way you didn't understand coltrane, when he went to free jazz or whatever. sanchez: that's right. shockley: ..but who later came back, and took a different look at your work. would you share the story that you told me about professor davis.? sanchez: ah i love professor arthur p. davis and some of you younger people... scholars... should read him, and read some of his scholarship. a man, a poet by the name larry neal was
teaching at a college in hartford connecticut, and he set up a panel. on one side of the room was dr. arthur p. davis, sterling brown, and the other brother who did cavalcade... i cannot think of his name, i always blank on his name you know that big book, right? and then on the other side was larry neal, baraka and myself. and my
plane had been late, so all of a sudden i come into this hall and these students are in an uproar, you know, and i remember walking down the aisles, getting on the stage. i hug larry and baraka, and then i went over and i hugged arthur p. davis, sterling brown and whoever the other person was, the other editor. and it was an setup, because the students wanted to
see us slapping each other and debating each other, and i didn't do it. and dr. davis said to me many years later, "you came over and you greeted us, and you hugged us". and i said, "well, you know, i just wanted you to know that i had read you and i wasn't offended because you had said that we were haters." because he said to me and sterling brown said the same thing,
"the problem with you young poets when you came out socking and hitting everybody, you know, is that we already had our niche in academe and in the world of poetry. and all of a sudden you were coming with some stuff that ... you were upsetting us, and the establishment, and the country. and so therefore it was very hard to say, 'let me embrace you', because it was very difficult."
and brother sterling said, "you scared us half to death." [laughing] and i guess we did scare people half to death. but the great thing about what i call a great scholar... and for all you young scholars out there... is that it is always good to note, to say when you have made a mistake. to me that is a true scholar, and i had come down to howard university to do a reading
for students. there was a packed audience there at... what is it crampton hall? ... and i saw dr. davis sitting down in front. so i am behind the podium, and i did this talk then i ended up with some poems. then the students got up and they stamped their feet and whatever. then they sat down. we were getting ready for a q&a and dr. davis stayed on his feet and he says, "i am dr. author p. davis. i have taught
at howard university for forty years, and some years ago i wrote an essay about these young people in the black arts movement," and he says "i want you to know that i was wrong in what i said." well i came right off the stage, walked right down in front and hugged him and kissed him. and we just held each other, and the students just went "wow". well what was that?
that was showing students, at some point, that there really should be no division between us at all. that if you understand what times you come out of, then you have to understand that we could not write necessarily the way that they wrote. but we do, we had the skills. baraka was certainly one of the greatest poets this country has ever produced.
so, we had the skills, we knew how to do it, but also we knew also at some point we had to throw some politics in there because at some point we were trying to organize people in this country. and so one of the myths was that only black folks came to our readings, but you know that's not true. i mean, half my audience was
white students. many i had taught also were latino students, were asian students because they had the same ideas that we were talking about, talking to them. that was a mighty thing. and many other people along the way ... a great poet gwendolyn brooks always supported us. and the thing about gwendolyn brooks is the way that she said, "i want to write like y'all write.
because i see you get to people, i see people respond to you." and so she supported us. so that's why i support younger writers. that's why i will stop and send a check or send a note or send a gift, and say, "how are you? can i help you? do you need help? what's going on?" because that's what sister gwen did. so we learned from the elders who have
gone before. so when we become an elder, we do that same thing. but, fear ... you should just write for all the students ... put "fear", write it on some paper. then fold it up to the smallest thing that you can fold it up to. then start tearing it, just tear it to pieces, and then put fire to it. then take it ouside
and spread it to the winds. that's where fear belongs. not in your guts, not in your throat, not in your eyes, not in your hands, not in your feet. because we are not saying in this day, "feets get steppin'", you know. [laughing] shockley: oh these are words to live by, i have to say. you touched on another question that
i wanted to ask you, and i'll sort of put it in two parts. could you say more about the role that you've taken in terms of mentoring the generations after you, and beyond that where do you see the legacy of the black arts movement when you look around today? sanchez: well i know i was doing a reading once at columbia university, and
at the end of the reading, a professor stood up and said "ah professor sanchez it's so good to come and hear you read because i especially always loved your lyrical pieces," and he said, " i've grown to accept your hard-hitting political pieces because they're well written." i mean its interesting and he said, "but i am so tired of this rap rap stuff
so its really good to come hear a poet." and you know i ... some people clap and some of the younger people did not clap.... and i said, "my dear brother, i don't offend people at all ... i mean that's what ... but i do want to say to you that there are many of the young rappers that are poets, they're true poets", and i say ... i always defend them and support them. especially
in all the good that they do. now if they are constantly calling a sister a bitch and a ho... i've been to many of these events where they do their poetry and they do their rapping, and if someone's on stage and says that, i go "boooooo!". and the first time they had that big program was at ... for all the rappers was at radio city music hall here in new york
city, and sister brenda and i, and brother taliefs mother and i stood up the whole time listening to it. and one of the young brothers came out and i booed. and some people behind me, some sisters, said, "why's she booing? why do you boo?" i said, "are you a ho?" shockley: right
sanchez: and they went and looked ... whatever. so i said, "that's why i do it. you should've booed too". anytime someone calls you a ho, i say, you need to say one of two things, "your mama", you know, or boo. but they had a backstage party that brenda and i were invited to. and you know the brother dave chappelle was standing on the steps, and he said,
"professor sanchez, how you doing sister sonia?" he said, "that was you huh?" and i said, "right, you know i will boo you if you disrespect women." i said, "you know we have gone a long ways in this country to deny what the things that they say about black women, so i will say it out loud, under my breath, you know, between my teeth. but if you are able to say it out loud, i will
reply, i will respond." so yeah, my dear sister, that's important. what was the other part of the question? shockley: thinking about rap as one of the ... sort of parts of the legacy black arts movement, and actually maybe this is a good way to direct or shape this, because we had someone write in and give us the name we were looking for ... saunders redding,
was the..." sanchez: thank you! shockley: yeah... saunders redding [chuckling]. and a another person has written in asking if you would be willing to talk about margaret walker in this tradition ...and now that i am thinking...sanchez: who's asked that? is that our dear sister? shockley: it might be maryemma...sanchez: is that maryemma? shockley: no it's jerry ward. professor ward.
sanchez: oh! jerry, jerry! i have been trying to contact you for the longest time. you must call me, ok? shockley: when we think about walker and brooks, yourself, and jessica ... sanchez: oh, i love them all! shockley: ... and sharan, that tradition..."sanchez: yeah it is. shockley: talk about what it's like to look backwards and forwards from? sanchez: i always talk to sister margaret and sister gwen,
because they were so important to me. sister margaret and sister gwen, and sterling brown, and dudley randall, and sister margaret in dusable museum... shockley: burroughs?sanchez: ...sister margaret burroughs. all of them form an amazing bunch of people, and so i always included them in everything that i did on purpose. the thing that ... when i got a little money
when i was teaching at amherst college, i invited sister gwen and brother sterling and got big bucks for them. that's what you do. you repay them for all the years that they have loved us and continued to love us, and supported us. sister gwen would take her money and give us an award, a monetary award, when they had the conferences in chicago.
i do that, because i've learned from people like sister gwen. sister gwen didn't live in some mansion someplace. i don't live in some mansion somplace. people come to my house and say, "is this where you live?" [laughing] and, i say, "yes this is where i live, in germantown, on purpose." because one of the things that you
understand at some point, is that the writings of sister gwen, and sister margaret for my people, the writings of brother sterling, my dear sister, the strong men keep getting stronger. dudley randall starting broadside press publishing us, and we do the first poem on malcolm in that press... for the first time a whole book on
malcolm. what was important to all of us is that we understood that they were the people who came before us, and we were a continuation of them. and what i want younger people to understand ... the ones who don't ... who say, "i'm not political", and i say, "you are political by not being political. everything is political."
either you maintain the status quo or you talk about change. take your pick, but either way you are political. you've got to understand that. but, the point is that our ancestors were ... what you learn... weren't scared. we have a herstory and a history of people who rose up, who said simply, "i will not take this any longer."
and so therefore, that's what we did in the poetry in the sixties. we were not have you constantly telling us who we are. let me tell you who i am, let me tell you about my grandmother, let me tell you about this woman walking the streets of philadelphia. let me tell you in this poem about sister gwendolyn brooks,
who she really is ... who sister margaret walker really is at this women's conference. let me tell you what it really means to be a black women on this earth while trying to walk upright, and there's always some people saying you ain't nothing at all. so, what we did... so i never had acted the fool on the stage, my sister, because i
knew when i got on the stage they were with me. so i couldn't act the fool. i couldn't do crazy things on stage at all. because they were there watching me saying, "look out sonia, were here looking at you." and that's what this is truly all about, the great tradition of black writing, all the way from phillis wheatley all the way up to all these younger poets there.
writing, they might be doing it differently than we do it. but, i am not to tell them ... questlove, when i go and listen to them and hear them playing, and hear them also going back looking at some of the other music, and incorporating that into what they do, i say, "amen, awoman, awoman, awoman awomen, amen."
i understand truly what this is about. when i listen to talib, and the brother who just changed his name... shockley: mos def. sanchez: mos def, right. these are people that i sought out. and, sister ursula and i sought them out saying come i have a gig. baraka and i have a gig, but i want
include you too on the gig, so you can make some money. so you don't always have to be in timbuktu someplace playing a gig. and so you can begin to talk about yourselves. but what we began do is that we began to talk about what were doing. other people started to say, "you're doing this". i'd say, "no i'm not". so i got on stages, i read and in
conversations i said this is what i'm doing. so, i taught the students what we were really doing. that was important. so sister ursula, and talib got on stage with baraka and myself. but, we also showed the students no separation here. we are a continuation of each other.
none of this crazy jealousies that people are throwing out at each other. because we wanted to say simply, "hey there is room for all of us". so when the younger poets come along, i just say, "hey here's a seat for you. come on, let's hear what you have to say. come on. go on. read it." i want to hear it. i want to clap.
i want to smile. i want to say as teacher, "i'm not to sure about that, but if it's cool, whatever." but that's what you do. shockley: but that's what you do. oh my goodness. i mean listening to you talk and thinking about all the things that you've been saying, we have such an example of the ideas that you were saying in the
quote that i began with.... about growth over the course of a life. and, about openness ... i'm thinking about how much your work demonstrates that you can do what you have said is important for a poet to do, without being limited to any one particular style of poetry. you draw from the things you learned from bogan, you draw from the things you
learned from coltrane. both of those help you think about form in your writing. it's such a beautiful example. thinking long view like that actually makes me want to ask you a question about the documentary that just was released. we as an institute got to see, i think, the next to final version. just before it was released back in july,
and we were very moved by it. would you share a little bit about what it was like to make the documentary? what you think of it?" sanchez: right. i think it's ... i finally have seen... [laughing] you know you can't watch yourself, because we come... people forget that we come out of the civil rights movement,
first of all, right? before we went into the black arts, black power, black studies, ok? and, so you never praised yourself. it was never about praising yourself. i have never watched myself in movies and stuff, documentaries, i'm serious! when people have something like that, i get up and leave. i'll watch my plays though because that's important for me
to see what someone is doing with a play. or i'll watch someone reciting my poetry. but, i don't watch me, because it's like, "oh god, did i say that? did i look like that? did i really have that on?" seriously, but it's like ... you know... it's ... i don't know what it is. but, that's the herstory of that. and so, so i finally saw it on the third
showing, and because one of my twins, i think morani said, "mom you're going have to answer questions on it. so, you got to see it eventually right?" i slouched down into one of the seats, and watched it. and, you know, i was laughing at myself because every time they said were coming over to record me, to tape me, to shoot me,
i didn't get dressed up. i was running around the house and i had on just a hat. and so i regretted that at some point, like why didn't you put on something? why didn't you comb your hair? why didn't you go get your hair done? and then i said, because that's not you. and, also i wasn't sure whether i was really going to complete this at all.
so i was just kind of like feeling my way. so it was like questions like now, and i began to answer questions with them. and then they kept coming back or they kept following me when i went to alabama, when i went to other places. they cut a lot evidently from that film. i was saying someplace recently, that one of the things that they cut
out which ... i was rushing out to the supermarket. i am a vegetarian, i'm a macrobiotic, and so i get usually all organic foods ... at my store they have little organic food. but i was rushing in to get some cleanser and stuff. some soap and stuff for the kitchen. and, i pass by the meat counter. i looked at the meat it was all red, i mean dyed red, i mean red dyed meat.
what they do when they want meat to look fresh they stick it with red dye. and, i just stood there. i don't eat meat, but i went and got a cart and i put the meat in the cart in a dramatic fashion. people were walking around me as i was doing it. and, i was mumbling to myself. then i went over to the produce, and the
veggies and fruit looked as if they had had a nervous breakdown. and, they were selling it not for half price or like for whatever. and i took it out and put it out and pushed the bell. guy came out and he looked and saw the stuff there. and he said, "lady what are you doing?" and i said, "where you live?
do you have this kind of stuff at your supermarket? i know you don't." and he looked at me and said, "lady what are you doing? i'm going to call the police." i said, "good, call the police, because this is a criminal act here. in my neighborhood this is a criminal act, this food that you bring here." and i said, "so call them."
he went back in, and i said, "but i'm going to come back tomorrow, and you better have some better looking fruit, and veggies and meat in here, 'cause i eat meat." i got very dramatic. i got my stuff and i'm looking at my watch and said, "oh my god, my grad student is probably going to leave." and i felt a tap on my bag, and i turn around. and there was this sister with three
children. she said, "how do you do that?" and you know i'm in a hurry. i'm late. i'm thinking, if she leaves i will collapse., right? and i said, "i'm sorry, excuse me." she said, "how do you do that?" and i said, "oh, oh, oh oh!" she said, "...over there in the produce." i said, "oh my dear sister i've been in a lot of organizations, and you
learn how to organize, you learn how to go out and do campaigns against stores, against buildings that will not in any way rent to blacks and puerto ricans. so i've done things like this." she said, "... because i want my children to do that." and for the young students, if they're listening, that's why you got to do that. because you want your children to do that.
you want the people you teach to do that. because you are in a county and in a world simply that will screw you, with food, will kill you with food that is terrible, that is shot full of all kinds of dye. with vegetables that have no kind of vitamin content at all. will put you in buildings that are rat-infested and not care. will price you out of new york city
and make you live outside the city, and travel in just the way they did in south africa. that's why you can't be afraid, my dear sisters and brothers. you must write what you know to be the truth. all i ask of my students was not to be mean, but to write it well. that's all bogan asked us. she asked us to write well. it was in her class that i
published my first poem, in her class. because she taught us what i teach my students: how to send work out. you go to the h.g. bookstore, and you find the journals that reflect your kind of writing, and then you choose ten of them. and you send no more then three, because she was the poetry editor of the new yorker. and she said, "no, if you don't
get me by the second poem you ain't going to get me by the fourth or fifth. send three poems, right?" the first time i sent my poetry out by the time i got back home, it was in my mailbox with "the editors", right? and then, two months later i would then get ... before then from the paris review i got this...george garrett sent me this long note saying, "sonia we would have published
this post, but we were beholden to some of the other people that we knew. this is great. keep sending me your stuff." i still have that letter by george garrett. and then the next two weeks, i was published. i went and bought wine ... because i knew bogan drank ...and paper cups, you know, and donuts and went in and i came in and said, "i published". and everybody ... the forty-five people there...
two women, all white males, two women: a white woman and myself. joann ... she became a children's writer, a children's book writer. and, i went to see louise bogan in her office, because she was not a regular professor. she was a poet who taught a course at nyu. i asked her, "tell me, do i have any talent? should i keep writing?" "oh, sonia, why do you want to
know?" i said, "because i want to know if i'm wasting my time." and she said, "many people have talent, but they don't do anything with it. if you are willing to write and write as i have instructed, then..." i said, "do i have talent?" she said, "yes you do, but you've got to be willing to write."
and that's what i've done, and i always carry her voice in my head. her and a woman by the name kay boyle, whose is a great, great novelist back then with hemingway, who was my mentor out at a place called san francisco state. the people who just said simply at some point, "you can write. write. do it."
and that's what i've been trying to do, trying to make everyplace i enter into a holy place, that includes my books also. shockley: thank you so much. now i want the second documentary, the third documentary, twelve more webinars ... more than we have time for right now. thank you so much for being here and fortalking with us sanchez: thank you. and thank the audience if they,
are they still there? shockley: they are still there. i'm going to have some closing remarks and it includes a thank you to the audience. absolutely.sanchez: okay. shockley: please join us for our eight and final webinar in the series: nathaniel mackey on wednesday, december the 9th at 1 p.m. central time. we would like to thank today ku's ermal garinger academic resource
center staff and also the schomburg center for research in black culture, especially ms. aisha diori for making today's webinar possible. a very special thank you to sonia sanchez for being here, and a special thank you also to you all for sharing this exciting event with us. a downloadable podcast from today's webinar will be available on our
website soon. in the meantime, don't forget to follow us online on the hbw website, on ttwitter and on our blog about events related to black writing. see you on wednesday, december 9th at 1 p.m. central for out conversation with nathaniel mackey. have a great day." sanchez: bye-bye [laughing]