Wounded in the House of a Friend

by Sonia Sanchez

Overview

An exploration of the pain, self-doubt, and anger that emerge in women's lives, from a leading writer of the Black Arts Movement and the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner.

Renowned African-American poet Sonia Sanchez writes of 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

ISBN-13:	9780807068274
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	04/30/1997
Series:	Bluestreak , #3
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	108
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.31(d)

About the Author

Sonia Sanchez is poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell Professor of English and Women's Studies at Temple University, and is currently a poet-in-residence there. Her numerous honors include the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award. she is the author of sixteen books, including Like the Singing Coming off the Drums, Does Your House Have Lions?, Wounded in the House of a Friend, Shake Loose My Skin, and Morning Haiku.

Editorial Reviews

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. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

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.

Library Journal