Product Description

Renowned African-American poet Sonia Sanchez explores the pain, self-doubt, and anger that emerge in women's lives: an unfaithful life partner, a brutal rape, the murder of a woman by her granddaughter, the ravages of drugs. Sanchez transforms the unspoken and sometimes violent betrayals of our lives into a liberating vision of connection in emotional redemption, compassion, and self-fulfillment.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #947082 in Books
• Published on: 1997-04-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Sanchez (Under a Soprano Sky), along with Nikki Giovanni, was a major player in the early 1970s as African American women began to explore feminist, political and cultural issues in poetry. Focusing on performance as an integral aspect of craft, Sanchez prepared the way for such writers as Ntozake Shange. Much of this book (her first in eight years) pays back debts; in a mixture of poetry and prose, she commemorates a quarter century of Essence magazine and offers memorial pieces for James Baldwin and Malcolm X. Sanchez is at her best, however, when she places her speaker in the furious center of criminal action: a raped woman's detailed account of her attack, a woman trading her seven-year-old daughter for crack ("he held the stuff out/ to me and i cdn't remember/ her birthdate i cdn't remember/ my daughter's face"). A brilliant narrative is offered in the voice of a Harlem woman struggling with (and eventually hammered to death by) her junkie granddaughter. After such emotion, Sanchez turns to a series of minuscule poems based on Japanese forms that blunt rather than intensify her breathless energy.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In this collection, former National Endowment for the Arts and American Book Award winner Sanchez presents a homage to African Americans, both past and present. Neruda said political poetry is more deeply emotional than any other poetry except love poetry. But poetry is not all raw emotion; and as art, these poems usually leave much to be desired. Take for example, "it wassssssssssssssssssssss/the raping that was bad/it was the raping" and "It is not strange that we have men and women/of conscience here tonite who in defending and/defining Black culture defend the country. The world./Humanity as well." Occasionally, the language soars, but these moments are few and far between. Also included are a Nicaraguan journal in prose, poems about a young woman with a drug problem, a prose/poetry mix about an unfaithful husband, and a selection of haiku and tanka. One gets the impression the author has cleaned out her drawers to fill this hodgepodge. For large and special collections only.
Doris Lynch, Monroe Cty. P.L., Bloomington, Ind.
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Sanchez validates her status as a poet of consequence in this high-impact volume, her first book in eight years. Her ringing voice gives voice to the emotions of many; she is compassionate, proud, angry, and determined as she writes about betrayals both private and public. A husband deceives his affection-starved wife; a young girl is raped; a drug addict beats her own grandmother to death; and a crack head trades her seven-year-old daughter for a fix. Sanchez forces us to confront these bewildering and horrifying tragedies that take place behind closed doors and scar and scorch the American psyche, but she also reminds us that war rages in Nicaragua, Bosnia, and Rwanda. Grim matters, but Sanchez offers hope and heroes. She celebrates quiet victories in poems such as her tribute to Essence on its twenty-fifth anniversary and her beautiful praise song for Spelman College and the black women who graduated from there with degrees in freedom, self-respect, and a commitment to racial and sexual justice. Sanchez remembers Malcolm X and James Baldwin and sings of African women "disposed to dreams and truth." There are triumphs as well as tribulations, so Sanchez chants, "Catch the fire . . . and live / live / livelivelivelive." Donna Seaman

Customer Reviews

Captures Essence of Latina Experience in America
Sonia Sanchez is the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University and a national lecturer. She is the author of thirteen books and recipient of many awards and honors, including a National Endowment for the Arts grant and the Peace and Freedom Award from the Women's International Leaque for Peace and Freedom.

In Wounded in the House of a Friend, Sanchez uses poetry and prose to create scenes from life that flow from unhappy relationships to moments of pride when Malcolm X speaks or Nelson Mandela walks from his South African prison, fist raised in victory, to a desperate, crack-addicted mother abandoning her child to her supplier for a few more days of escape.

I read one review that said her book makes you think. I found myself "feeling" even more than thinking. Her narration of a rape scene was so realistic, I had trouble getting through it to the end, it made me feel so emotional.

Her use of the sounds and rhythm of language, make her scenes and characters come to life, "stop it now girl, i ain't studyin you, stop shovin me, stop it now, you ain't gittin no mo money, jest the ten dollars," says a grandmother who is guardian to her teenaged granddaugher and doesn't know how to stop her from using drugs. The grandmother reaches toward the girl with "these hands that worked in every house in Bklyn" and remembers that "i picked her up from her tricycle." The reader is transported to the room where the grandmother is trying to understand as the little girl she picked up from her tricycle not too many years ago is now attacking her for "mo money" and beating her to death.

Sanchez' scenes are sometimes graphic and tragic, sometimes pulsating and erotic, and they capture life as some of us can only imagine it in the poor neighborhoods of big cities.

Excellent poetic storytelling!
Ms. Sanchez paints a picture with her words. The words remind you of yourself, your mom, aunt, grandmother, friend or any woman you know who has experienced love, knows about the effect of drugs on family, lived through American wars, understands the experience and history at Historically Black Colleges and Universities and simply can relate to the African American woman's experience or whoever wants to know about it from one black woman's experience. This book is great reading.