Sonia Sanchez reminds me a lot of Maya Angelou because of her strength. Maya Angelou has been quoted saying “Sonia Sanchez is a lion in literature’s forest. When she writes she roars, and when she sleeps other creatures walk gingerly.” Sonia’s inspiration is empowerment of black women and the struggle of African Americans. Since she played such a huge part in the Civil Rights movement, I can respect her expertise in this area and I can feel her passion in her work. From the simplest of her haiku, to the most complex, I can feel the struggle in each and every one. She and Maya Angelou have spent their careers encouraging young women, especially women of color. Take the following comparison of poems:
my thighs
sing the flesh
off the guitar
morning haiku, Sanchez, 6
This haiku reminds me of a poem by Maya Angelou called “Phenomenal Woman” in this section of the piece:
The span of my hips,
The stride of my step,
The curl of my lips.
I'm a woman
Phenomenally.
Maya Angelou
Although the Maya Angelou poem is not a haiku, I feel that it is a great comparison to match the Sonia Sanchez haiku. In both poems, they are praising the power of what they have sexually, pertaining to their legs. I so admire the strength of these two women and the confidence they have. They both recognize the power of a woman and the individual power that they hold. I like this haiku by Sanchez because it is full of empowerment and vainness that is needed by every woman. I do not like to turn everything into race, but this is especially true of black women. We often need to be reminded of our self-worth and remember how powerful we are as women.
aaaaaahhhhhhh
yeyeyeyeyeye
i am still standing . . .
morning haiku, Sanchez, 6
Wow, this poem is very significant to me. I can literally feel the relief in this haiku. I feel that Sonia is relieved for herself because of something negative that they may have gone through. I can sense a struggle personally for Sanchez in this haiku. I can also sense a struggle on a larger scale. She is feeling relief that she is still standing despite the brutality, negativity, and oppression of black women over the years. Since Sanchez was born in 1934, she has seen much of the struggle for African Americans. I’m sure she feels very blessed to have made it through such scary and depressing periods of history, especially being from the south. This reminds me of a famous Maya Angelou poem called: “Still I Rise”.
This specific section reminds me of Sanchez’s haiku:
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
Maya Angelou
Both poems hold the same meaning for me. I feel like both of these women are product of a broken system but prevailed. I can them being smothered during the movement, but when these two poems where written, they felt like they could finally breathe. They felt like they had finally, finally, reached the light at the end of the tunnel. The daylight that they experienced during these poems was bigger than the two of them. The daylight was a daylight that shined over the United States as a whole. Both of these ladies shared powerful words of overcoming and being triumphant in both of these poems.
How to dance
in blood and
remain sane?
morning haiku, Sanchez, 38
Sanchez digs deep into the dynamic between living a dirty life and trying to act normal. This is interesting because when I read this haiku, I immediately thought of slavery. I thought of slavery despite the fact that Sanchez, a black activist, wrote it. I think both slaves and slave owners danced in blood in different ways. Slavery was such a bloody, gory, and dark time period. As slaves were whipped and beaten to a bloody pulp, they had no choice but to prevail from it. Enslaved people were forced to literally swim in blood baths for years and were expected to act completely normal. They were raised and bred to believe that they were inferior to their owner and where deathly frightened of the consequences of their disobedience. It’s difficult for us, as free people to imagine such a cruel system of living. Many slave owners killed slaves, whipped them, and even raped them. With generations and generations of people participating in such a system, I could understand how they could be neck deep in blood and not even realize it. With generations of blood on their hands, it created a warped sense of being and frame of mind for slave owners. For a slave owner to have complete physical and mental control over a group of human beings, creates a tyrant like being. Without getting too much deeper into the philosophy of the mind of a slave owner, I will conclude by saying that both slaves and slave owners danced in blood and were expected to behave normally which is completely impossible and still affects certain parts of society today. I believe Sanchez is talking about this situation in her haiku, and even if she wasn’t, that is what I took from it.
In the following haiku, Sonia Sanchez writes to a familiar African American author, Toni Morrison. I have read books by Toni Morrison in the past, my favorite being Beloved. Beloved was a horror story about an escaped slave woman that was forced to murder her own baby. She refused to have her children returned to slavery and sliced the neck of her infant child. Honestly, slavery itself is a horror story. Sanchez touches on these horrors in the next few haiku.
We know so little
about migrations of souls crossing
oceans. Seas of longing;
morning haiku, Sanchez, 51
In Beloved, Toni Morrison created a character that was a ghost who was actually on the slave ship. She speaks of not being about to breathe because she was so deep in blood. This haiku holds so much truth and history Sonia Sanchez and Toni Morrison as well as I, think of the Atlantic Slave trade as much more than one chapter of our history books. Much of the history on these events have not been documented and the history that was documented is often written with bias language. In any event, it is a struggle for African Americans, because searching of our family history is extremely limited. We cannot trace our heritage because many of our ancestors were shipped from Africa and were not documented. I feel the pain of Sanchez in the first line when she says “We know so little,” because we truly do know very little of the events aboard those ships. The little that we do know, however, it terrifying. I do not think about the system of the trade as a whole when thinking of the Atlantic Slave trade. I think about the specific individuals that suffered on those ships. I can feel their hunger as they were fed the bare minimum to survive. I can feel the hopelessness in the pregnant woman’s heart as she jumps ship refusing to go to America and have her child born in such cruelty. I can see the hundreds of humans that were thrown from the ship when food and water became scarce. I can smell the feces on the people on the bottom of the ship, as they were not able to go to the bathroom like regular humans. I can feel the sting of the salt water that was thrown on the wounds of the Africans that were whipped until their flesh was open. Finally, I can hear the cries of my people at the bottom of those ships shoulder to shoulder, even if the shoulder they were next to was lifeless.
in the beginning
there wuz we and they and others
too mournful to be named;
morning haiku, Sanchez, 51
Sanchez warms my heart when she brings attention to such an overlooked aspect of slavery. After the Africans were brought to America, their original names where completely disregarded. Their language went completely out of the window. Some people were given names such as pet names and others were not named at all. They were called stupid because they did not know or understand English. Eventually they learned English, but their language was broken for a very long time. Black people would speak and spell incorrectly; such as the word “wuz” that was purposefully placed in the haiku by Sanchez.
feet deep
in cotton you shifted
the country’s eyes
morning haiku, Sanchez, 73
If Sanchez’s haiku were a storyline, this haiku would take place much later during slavery. I don’t think much is known about how lucrative the cotton business actually was in the South. It affected the whole economic status of the country. For that reason, cotton pickers where brutalized into picking as much as humanly possible day by day. Although cotton was, and still is a very useful textile, much of the blood that was shed to get it, has been forgotten. Sanchez does not neglect to mention the importance of cotton pickers in the South. She uses the language “feet deep in cotton”. I can feel the sore feet of the slaves that picked cotton from sun up to sun down. I can see the dried up blood on their feet and can feel the tenderness in their hands as they pick through the rubbish. I can feel the discouragement on their hearts as they continue to pick and reap no benefits.
Sonia Sanchez is an awesome writer. I respect where she has come from and I admire her poetry. Her haiku are a breath of fresh air to me. She is by far my favorite haiku poet. Her inspiration is suffering, and hurt, especially that of black people. More than a poet, I see her a teacher. She is an instructor of history and art for generations in the past and generations to come. I have so enjoyed engaging in her writings and comparing them to other black authors that I greatly respect. I wish I could have had the opportunity to read more of her writings and indulge in the history lesson that comes with them. She inspires me as a writer and as the strong black women that I am evolving to be.
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Works Cited
ANGELOU, Maya. "POEM: PHENOMENAL WOMAN BY MAYA ANGELOU."Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 05 Nov. 2014.
ANGELOU, Maya. "POEM: STILL I RISE BY MAYA ANGELOU."Poemhunter.com. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Nov. 2014.
Sanchez, Sonia. Morning Haiku. Boston, Massachusetts: Beacon, 2010. Print.
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