Wounded in the House of a Friend

by Sonia Sanchez

Overview

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

ISBN-13:	9780807095300
Publisher:	Beacon Press
Publication date:	09/04/2012
Series:	Bluestreak , #3
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	108
Sales rank:	960,388
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Sonia Sanchez-award-winning poet, activist, scholar, and formerly the Laura Carnell professor of English and women's studies at Temple University-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, and Shake Loose My Skin.

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.

Publishers Weekly - Cahners\\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. (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

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