Sonia Sanchez Speaks at the MLK Library

by Jamie Walker

 

Washington, D.C.--Sonia Sanchez, former Howard University professor and author of more than a dozen books of poetry, including Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems (Beacon Press, 1999) and Like the Singing Coming Off Drums (Beacon Press, 1998), was the keynote speaker for a poetry extravaganza honoring the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. at the MLK Library on 901 G Streets NW in Washington, DC.

Some of DC’s most powerful, positive, and provocative poets and performers presented their original works at this standing-room only event, including Collective Voices, an international poetry group formed in 1996 who organized the literary celebration along with the Alliance for Cultural Enrichment, Inc., an umbrella organization for a variety of projects which also publishes the quarterly periodical ACE-Dialogue magazine.

Melanie Hatter, an aspiring writer who assisted Benita Dale, founder of ACE-Dialogue, with the planning of event, stated that she was excited about the high turn-out which was primarily due to word of mouth. “We queried people who came in as to how they found out about the event and it was mostly through word of mouth. That seems to be the way of getting information around,” Hatter said with a smile.

Jordine Dorce, for example, traveled all the way from Atlanta, Ga to hear the prolific poet, a key force in the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s who started Black Studies at San Francisco State University with Nathan Hare, speak to the standing-room only crowd.  “I heard about it in the event section at blackplanet.com,” Dorce said. “I came to get a glimpse of her energy because I write myself and she’s one of my favorite poets.”

In praise of Sonia Sanchez, winner of the American Book Award in 1985 for her book Homegirls and Handgrenades (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 1984), Kwame Alexander, poet and founder of Black Words, Inc., who hosted the celebration, read a poem which suggested that Essence Magazine should be renamed after the “tall” poet. Speaking eloquently behind a podium on a stage decorated with African fabric and designs supplied by Zawadi Gift Shop on 1524 U Street NW, Kwame revealed: “Essence magazine ought to be renamed/something intimate/more fire I say/more fire I say/more rhythm I say/more fire/more rhythm/more fire/more rhythm/like the singing coming off drums/under a soprano sky/I say make it musical/I say make it personal/sensual/even/meaning a blue black woman with a baaad tongue/and a forever phrase/who looks good too/I say call it/sonia.”

Delighted by Alexander’s keen introduction and impressed after hearing some of DC’s finest poets, including Girls with Hearts, a youth poetry group established in 1997, Sanchez stressed the importance of supporting youths who are “poeting” and those who also share a passion for the spoken and written word. After opening with a poem she had written for Martin Luther King, Jr. that was published in Homegirls and Handgrenades, Sonia said, “If we say we follow a man like Martin, we don’t do it by writing a poem. We do it by dedication. If we say we follow a man like Malcolm, we don’t do it by quoting him, you do it by living a righteous life. And a righteous life is not just going to church every Sunday and watching what other people are wearing. But a righteous life is to say to yourself every morning when I wake up, I will not violate my brother and my sister—personally, in the workforce, in the university, wherever we be—that we will always move on a Higher level because the reality of those so-called things called slavery was to keep us at the lowest level so therefore we would not deal in a human fashion. But in spite of that, the most amazing thing is that we have walked upright as human beings.”

Commenting about being on Tavis Smiley’s show when he was still at BET, Sonia said that after being asked what she thought was the greatest thing that ever occurred in the twentieth century, she replied, “African-Americans. Some of the other people [on the set] said civil rights, some people said the computer, some people said the bomb. And I thought, as he came to me last, I said the greatest thing that ever occurred in the twentieth century is that African-American people survived.”

Upon hearing such a statement, the crowd gave Sonia a roaring applause and she noted, “At the turn of the century, if you go back and read what people wrote about us, they said we would not survive. We, Africans, at the turn of the twentieth century, were not going to survive. Isn’t that amazing? And now in the twenty-first century here we is. You’ve got to cleanse yourselves of everything that is keeping you from moving correctly on this earth. I mean that.”

After noticing one of her Howard students who she taught last semester in a creative writing—poetry class, Sonia acknowledged the young woman and informed the audience, “As an assignment, I told my class go back to your dorms and your private apartments and do not say anything negative about anyone for a week. And I say to you all, think about that. If you don’t bring a negative thought in your mind about someone else, that means you walk on a different level. If you listen to people reading and you really don’t listen because you are so busy waiting until you get up to read, that’s a negative thought. If you look at people, a couple, and say that brother deserves to be with me, that’s a negative thought. You know what I’m saying? If you look at a sister, in a university, in a classroom, and she’s flunking the class—and you let her flunk without saying join my study group, we can study together, that’s a negative thought. If you are a teacher and you think these black children—coming in ragged, dirty, running noses, no food—if you think that they are terrible and you are just collecting a paycheck, that’s a negative thought, a negative action If you really think a black doctor, a black dentist, a black plumber, a black electrician cannot work for you, that’s a negative thought. I’m not saying people are perfect just search out the one that is good.”

Sanchez encouraged everyone in the audience “to begin the campaign again and again for statehood because you need a black senator and you need a black congressman. It’s outrageous that this is not a state. Come on people, it’s outrageous. And that’s a political statement. You better believe it. And one more political statement is about somebody down here whose a judge called Clarence Thomas, a man who made it through affirmative action and then would knock it.”

Sonia, a woman and a mother who has always been a political activist for black studies departments, women’s liberation, and racial justice then read a poem she had written for Clarence Thomas which was published in the introduction to Race-ing Justice, En-Gendering Power: Essays on Anita Hill, Clarence Thomas, and the Construction of Social Reality edited by Toni Morrison.

She read a love poem for Tupac Amiri Shakur, the slain, influential, and sometimes “controversial” rap star who was not only son to black activists, Afeni Shakur and Billy Garland, but whose voice also “echoed the concerns and the rage of many young African-Americans left to face the challenges of the ghetto alone.” Reading from Shake Loose My Skin, her collection of poetry published by Beacon Press in 1999, Sonia asked:

whose gold is carrying you home?

whose wealth is walking you through

this urban terror? whose greed

left you shipwrecked with golden

eyes staring in sudden death?

you were in

a place hot

at the edge

of our minds.

you were in 

a new world

a country

pushing with

blk corpses

distinct with

paleness and

it swallowed

you whole.

i will not

burp you up.

i hold you

close to my heart.”

In closing, Sonia who had high hopes of returning to Howard to teach again for the spring semester but was told by the dean that she could not due to a lack of funding, read a poem called Catch the Fire (originally written for Bill Cosby) for the youth in the audience:

Sister/Sistah. Brother/Brotha. Come/Come.

CATCH YOUR FIRE…DON’T KILL

HOLD YOUR FIRE…..DON’T KILL

LEARN YOUR FIRE…DON’T KILL

BE THE FIRE……………..DON’T KILL

Catch the fire and burn with eyes

that see our souls:

WALKING.

SINGING.

BUILDING.

LAUGHING.

LEARNING.

LOVING.

TEACHING.

BEING.

Hey. Brother/Brotha. Sister/Sistah.

Here is my hand.

Catch the fire…and live.