|
Books by Sonia Sanchez
Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems
(1999) /
Like the Singing Coming Off the Drums:
Love Poems (1998)
Does Your House Have Lions?
(1995) /
Wounded in the House of a
Friend (1995) /
Under a Soprano Sky
(1987) /
Homegirls
& Handgrenades (1984)
I've Been
a Woman: New and Selected Poems (1978)
/
A Blues Book for
Black Magical Women (1973) /
We
a BaddDDD People (1970)
Homecoming
(1969) /
A Sound Investment and Other
Stories (1979) /
The Adventure of Fat Head, Small
Head,
and Square Head (1973)
It's a New Day: Poems for
Young Brothas and Sistuhs (1971) /
We Be Word Sorcerers:
Twenty-five Stories by Black Americans (1973)
Living
At The Epicenter (Morse Poetry Prize) (1995)
* * *
* *
Sonia Sanchez and Ten Grandmothers
Acquitted of 'Defiant Trespassing'
By Jamie Walker
Philadelphia, PA—Sonia Sanchez, 71,
and ten other grandmothers, who are part of an
organization called The Granny Peace Brigade (GBP), were
recently acquitted in a Philadelphia Community Courtroom
on charges of 'defiant trespassing' in front of an Army
Recruitment Center earlier this year.
The grandmothers—all of whom are against the war in
Iraq—staged a peaceful protest outside a U.S. Armed
Forces Center in downtown Philadelphia on June 28, 2006.
While protesting, the women "sang peace songs, spoke out
against the war, and displayed colorful banners."
They also chanted, "Take us, not Philadelphia's children
and grandchildren. Let them live their lives."
As a result, all of the women were arrested and
detained. Their trial, which was set for December 1,
2006, lasted only fifteen minutes long, and drew
thousands of supporters from around the world. The
charges against them were dropped because they were
protesting in a public building and exercising their
right to free speech.
"What are we grandmothers going to have to do, for God's
sake, to try and wake up America?" asks Joane Wile,
Founder and Director of Grandmothers Against the War and
a member of the GBP.
"The anti-war movement must get ever more creative and
determined," says Wile. "New methods of protest must be
developed. Larger numbers of people must be engaged. New
leaders must emerge."
Wile believes that perhaps, most importantly, "the youth
must be aroused to leave their insulated comfort zones
(their video games, their rock concerts) and come out
and speak against the Bush atrocities."
The Granny Peace Brigade was actually born on October
17, 2005, when 18 women, ages 59 to 91, many of them
grandmothers, tried to enlist in the United States
military. They asked to enlist in order to replace their
grandchildren who they believed were being "deployed in
Iraq unnecessarily."
As one "Peace Granny" asserted, "We wanted our young
people to come home while they were still alive and
whole, to have the same opportunity for enjoying a long
life as we have had."
The grannies, however, we were denied access, arrested,
and jailed. After a six-day trial, they were acquitted
of all charges, "which was an affirmation of the
legality of non-violent protest."
Sonia Sanchez, herself a peace activist, notable poet,
and proud grandmother, heard about the GPB and decided
to join the Philadelphia chapter.
"All we are simply saying is let us begin this
discussion of peace," Sanchez said in her interview with
Professor Kim Pearson before her trial. "Let us begin
to invigorate this earth with peace. Let us begin again
the whole idea of people being able to live on this
earth in a peaceful fashion. Let us begin again the
beginning work that must be done that says, simply, that
peace is necessary."
Peace is necessary for the survival of this planet. As
water is to life, human beings need peace in order to
ensure the righteous development of our young people.
The earth needs peaceful warriors with the spirit of
Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Fanny Lou Hamer in
order to ensure that generations after us will not
buckle when their basic human rights have been taken
away.
Future generations need to be inspired to know peace,
breathe peace, speak peace, and be the peace that they
want to see in the world. They must know that their
grandmothers, grandfathers, mothers, sisters, fathers,
and brothers are inspiring them to take up the torch and
follow their precious lead.
"These grandmothers are actively looking at ways to move
towards peace for future generations," says Kadija Sesay,
a literary activist who was present at the trial. "It's
wonderful that our elders should do that, and it was
great to see that a lot of the younger generations were
there to support them."
The grannies have been traveling to various places in
the United States, promoting peace and garnering support
for their efforts through their website:
grannypeacebrigade.org.
They are willing to put their lives on the line in a
quest to save human lives.
Presently, they are calling upon all grandmothers to
join them on January 18, 2007 in Washington, DC, as they
meet with senators in hopes that the new 110th Congress
will "honor the mandate of the electorate, act with
integrity, and restore the basic tenets of our
Constitution."
*
* * * *
Jamie Walker is a freelance journalist who recently
completed a new book on Sonia Sanchez called Sonia On
My Mind. She can be reached through her website:
www.jamiewalker.org
posted 3 December 2006
*
* * * *
Sonia Sanchez on the State of Black Books—
I'm usually reading five or six different books at a
time. I'm reading Dreams
in a Time of War by Ngugi wa Thiong'o. I
remember when Ngugi was writing this book because I was
writing the first part of my memoir at the same time.
The joy of this memoir is simply that he talks about his
views as a boy during World War II. So we get a
wonderful sense of who he is as a young man.
I'm reading the
biography—the only biography—of John Oliver Killens [John
Oliver Killens: A Life of Black Literary Activism by
Keith Gilyard], a great novelist who died too early, too
young. I make sure all of my students read him. I'm also
reading Isabel Allende's new book, The
Island Beneath the Sea (La isla bajo el mar). I
just love Isabel and what she writes and the musicality
of her work. I just got in the mail yesterday
Nairobi Heat, a detective novel by Mukoma wa
Ngugi, Ngugi's son, that I can't wait to start reading.
And I'm reading the
manuscript for this new anthology on rap, so I'm
immersing myself in Chuck D, Rakim and Talib Kweli. I'm
so happy this book is happening and that they asked me
to write a blurb for it because they said I was one of
the older people who support young rappers. And I do. I
get up in the morning now and I play Rakim's "Casualties
of War" to remind myself about the dead bodies that come
home every day because of the two wars we are involved
in.—TheRoot
*
* * * *
Poet,
Activist,
Sonia
Sanchez
Reading
Toni
Cade
Bambara
Sonia Sanchez: Shake Loose Memories /
Sonia Sanchez speaks about Shake Loose Memories
* *
* * *
* *
* * *
 |
1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus
Created
By Charles C. Mann
I’m
a big fan of Charles Mann’s previous
book
1491:
New Revelations of the Americas Before
Columbus, in which he
provides a sweeping and provocative
examination of North and South America
prior to the arrival of Christopher
Columbus. It’s exhaustively researched
but so wonderfully written that it’s
anything but exhausting to read. With
his follow-up,
1493, Mann has taken it to a
new, truly global level. Building on the
groundbreaking work of Alfred Crosby
(author of
The Columbian Exchange and, I’m
proud to say, a fellow Nantucketer),
Mann has written nothing less than the
story of our world: how a planet of what
were once several autonomous continents
is quickly becoming a single,
“globalized” entity.
Mann not only talked to countless
scientists and researchers; he visited
the places he writes about, and as a
consequence, the book has a marvelously
wide-ranging yet personal feel as we
follow Mann from one far-flung corner of
the world to the next. And always, the
prose is masterful. In telling the
improbable story of how Spanish and
Chinese cultures collided in the
Philippines in the sixteenth century, he
takes us to the island of Mindoro whose
“southern coast consists of a number of
small bays, one next to another like
tooth marks in an apple.” We learn how
the spread of malaria, the potato,
tobacco, guano, rubber plants, and sugar
cane have disrupted and convulsed the
planet and will continue to do so until
we are finally living on one integrated
or at least close-to-integrated Earth.
Whether or not the human instigators of
all this remarkable change will survive
the process they helped to initiate more
than five hundred years ago remains,
Mann suggests in this monumental and
revelatory book, an open question. |
* * *
* *
|
Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
|
 |
* *
* * *
The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
* *
* * *
Ancient African Nations
* * * * *
If you like this page consider making a donation
* * * * *
Negro Digest /
Black World
Browse all issues
1950
1960
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
____ 2005
Enjoy!
* * * * *
The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
/
The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
/
Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery
* *
* * *
The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
* * * * *
* *
* * *
posted 22 December 2008
|
