Sonia Sanchez

             During an interview, Sanchez discusses how poetry kept her alive during the difficult times following her grandmother's death. In Sanchez" "Under a Soprano Sky", she pays tribute to her grandmother in "Dear Mama." Sonia explains how she was active as a child and had standard scrapes on her knees and dirt on her hands (Voices from the Gaps). But when adults in her life would scold her, mama would say, "Let her be / She got a right to be different / She gonna stumble on herself one of these days. / Just let the child be." Sanchez ends with a powerful, "And I be Mama." (line 12).
             This poem is a good example of how in African Americans culture one is to cherish each member of the family with they are living, but to remember them whan they are gone. Sanchez expresses these values in the last line, how it is in reverence that we begin to do the things that our elders did. One may begin to take on the characteristics of the loved one that has passed on.
             Sanchez" works are often passionate poems of prose that touch on social issues and modern times. Many of her poems are blunt and truthful. She addresses the history of African Americans from slave times to modern oppression. She once said " the existence of us as black folk in a place that did not speak well of us, a country that not only had enslaved us but afterward had ignored us - had segregated us and conspired to keep us from learning even the simplest things." (Voices) Soon after in 1985 a tragedy occurred in Philadelphia that affected Sanchez very deeply. A group of black political radicals were barricaded against the police in their place of residence. In response to this unforgettable tragedy Sanchez wrote "Elegy: For Move and Philadelphia." Sanchez wanted people to see the horrible significance of this tragedy and to never forget that it happened. She waited three years to present this poem to the people of Philadelphia. Sanchez writes: .