Sanchez was born in Birmingham, Alabama, on September 9, 1934, to Wilson L. Driver and Lena Jones Driver. Her mother died when Sanchez was only one year old, so she spent several years being shuttled back and forth among relatives. One of those was her grandmother, who died when Sanchez was six years old.[2] The death of her grandmother proved to be a trying time in her life, and Sanchez developed a stutter, which contributed to her becoming introverted. However, her stutter only caused her to read more and more and pay close attention to language and its sounds.[4][5]
In 1943, Sanchez moved to Harlem in New York City to live with her father (a school teacher), her sister, and her stepmother, who was her father's third wife. When in Harlem, she learned to manage her stutter and excelled in school, finding her poetic voice, which later emerged during her studies at Hunter College. Sanchez focused on the sound of her poetry, admitting to always reading it aloud, and received praise for her use of the full range of African and African-American vocal resources. She is known for her sonic range and dynamic public readings. She now terms herself as an "ordained stutterer".[2] Sanchez earned a BA degree in political science in 1955 from Hunter College.
Sanchez pursued post-graduate studies at New York University (NYU), working closely with Louise Bogan. During her time at NYU, she formed a writers' workshop in Greenwich Village, where the "Broadside Quartet" was born. The "Broadside Quartet" included other prominent Black Arts Movement artists such as Haki Madhubuti, Nikki Giovanni and Etheridge Knight. These young poets were introduced and promoted by Dudley Randall, an established poet and publisher.
Although her first marriage to Albert Sanchez did not last, Sonia Sanchez would retain her professional name. She and Albert had one daughter named Anita. She later married Etheridge Knight, had twin sons named Morani Neusi and Mungu Neusi, but they divorced after two years. Nonetheless, motherhood heavily influenced the motifs of her poetry in the 1970s, with the bonds between mother and child emerging as a key theme. She also has three grandchildren.[6][2]
Teaching
Sanchez taught 5th Grade in NYC at the Downtown Community School, until 1967. She has taught as a professor at eight universities and has lectured at more than 500 college campuses across the US, including Howard University. She was also a leader in the effort to establish the discipline of Black Studies at university level. In 1966, while teaching at San Francisco State University, she introduced Black Studies courses. Sanchez was the first to create and teach a course based on Black Women and literature in the United States and the course she offered on African-American literature is generally considered the first of its kind taught at a predominantly white university.[7] She viewed the discipline of Black Studies as both a new platform for the study of race and a challenge to the institutional biases of American universities. These efforts are clearly in line with the goals of the Black Arts Movement, and she was a known Black feminist. Sanchez was the first Presidential Fellow at Temple University, where she began working in 1977. There, she held the Laura Carnell chair until her retirement in 1999. She is currently a poet-in-residence at Temple University. She has read her poetry in Africa, the Caribbean, China, Australia, Europe, Nicaragua, and Canada.
Activism
Sanchez supports the National Black United Front and was a very influential part of the Civil Rights Movement and the Black Arts Movement. In the early 1960s, Sanchez became a member of CORE (Congress for Racial Equality), where she met Malcolm X. Though she was originally an integrationist in her thinking, after hearing Malcolm X speak Sanchez became more separatist in her thinking and focused more on her black heritage and identity.[8]
In 1972, Sanchez joined the Nation of Islam, during which time she published A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women (1974), but she left the organization after three years, in 1975. because their views on women's rights conflicted. She continues to advocate for the rights of oppressed women and minority groups.[7] She wrote many plays and books that had to do with the struggles and lives of Black America. Among her plays are Sister Son/ji, which was first produced Off-Broadway at the New York Shakespeare Festival Public Theater in 1972; Uh, Huh: But How Do it Free us?, staged in Chicago at the Northwestern University Theatre in 1975, and Malcolm Man/Don't Live Here No Mo’, first produced in 1979 at the ASCOM Community Center in Philadelphia.[6]
Sanchez has edited two anthologies of Black literature: We Be Word Sorcerers: 25 Stories by Black Americans (1974) and 360° of Blackness Coming at You (1999). She is also committed to a variety of activist causes, including the Brandywine Peace Community, MADRE, and Plowshares.
Black Arts Movement
The aim of the Black Arts Movement was a renewal of black will, insight, energy, and awareness. Sanchez published poetry and essays in numerous periodicals in the 1960s, including The Liberator, Negro Digest, and Black Dialogue. Her writing established her importance as a political thinker to the "black aesthetic" program.[2] Sanchez gained a reputation as an important voice in the Black Arts Movement after publishing the book of poems Homecoming in 1969. This collection and her second in 1970, titled We a BaddDDD People, demonstrated her use of experimental poetic forms to discuss the development of black nationalism and identity.[9]
