Wounded in the House of a Friend (Bluestreak) - Softcover

Sanchez, Sonia

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0807068276 ISBN 13: 9780807068274

Publisher: Beacon Press, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

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.

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

About this edition

• Publisher: Beacon Press
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0807068276
• ISBN 13: 9780807068274
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 108