Winner Gish Prize for Lifetime Achievement
A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career.
Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez's poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women's rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults.
As Maya Angelou so aptly put it: "Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature's forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly."
BIO
Sonia Sanchez -- award-winning poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell professor of English and women's studies at Temple University -- is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, and Shake Loose My Skin.
REVIEWS
"The poetry of Sonia Sanchez is full of power and yet always clean and uncluttered. It makes you wish you had thought those thoughts, felt those emotions, and, above all, expressed them so effortlessly and so well." --Chinua Achebe, Nobel Prize laureate
"Sonia Sanchez remains one of the most read, respected, and visible figures of the Black Arts Movement." --Amiri Baraka
"You have spoken for us . . . Written for us . . . Sung to us . . . How much in your debt we are." --Toni Morrison
[H] Beacon Press / April 13, 2021
1.7" H x 9.1" L x 6.0" W (1.7 lbs) 424 pages