Poet, mother and professor Sonia Sanchez on preparing practical plans to fuel your dreams, the universal experience of pain and navigating career highs and lows in any field.
Sonia Sanchez always knew she wanted to be a poet. She says she also knew that she was not “insane” and couldn’t make a living just writing poetry. So she created a practical plan to support herself and fuel her dream. The first step of her plan was to find a job that would also give her chances to do what really wanted to do. For Sonia, that job was teaching – initially elementary school and later college. Teaching gave her flexibility. However, Sonia’s opportunities to write were not always handed to her, but rather tiny pockets of time she stole from her busy life.
This mother who worked both in and outside the home would leave her job at Temple University to begin an exhausting nightly routine. Each evening Sonia would travel the stairs of her four-story home countless times, doing the things she had to do in order to do make time for the things wanted. Her choreographed ballet of multitasking would begin by fixing dinner and getting her children started with their homework upstairs. Then down to the basement to wash clothes, or take out the frozen food that she had cooked on Sunday to defrost in the refrigerator and heat in the oven the next night. Sonia would then walk the stairs to her study to read some papers, record the grades and look in on the children. At about 12:30 a.m., she’d make a final trip to perhaps check the dryer, fold clothes and get a jumpstart on the ‘next’ day by laying out her children’s clothes for school. Finally, at 1 a.m. Sonia would sit down and work on the creative stuff that kept her “alive, healthy, viable and human.” In fact, Sonia believes that teaching and writing are the two things that humanize us all.
In a sense Sonia found her purpose, or at least part of it, when she sought a ‘means to an end.’ Her job in time grew into a successful profession, which then evolved into her purposeful way to do what she loves and make an enormous positive impact on the world.
Who do you believe first connected you to your love of words and language and the essence of who you are?
As a child, I loved the words people used. I always wanted everyone to read to me and tell me stories. When I was four years old, my grandmother, who took care of me and my sister, told my aunt Louise to teach me how to read. I’ve loved words ever since.
My grandmother introduced me to my love of language. As the head deaconess of our church in Birmingham, Alabama, she and the women who surrounded me shared their unique ‘language.’ On Saturdays, the women from church would gather at our house to talk while they prepared Sunday dinner. I remember the sound of snapping string beans, but I also remember listening to them talk. The beauty and melting of soft words was a soothing language. Every now and then they would say something funny and I would giggle and ‘Mama’ would shoot her eyes behind the counter like, “You better keep quiet if you want to stay here.” Even when the talked about something serious like Mr. Johnson hitting Paulette, and discussing what they were going to do about that – there would be that snapping of the beans. It was their voice and language, and that ‘snap’ that I put into a piece I called, “Dear Mama.”
It was because of my grandmother that I understood the power of women’s words and the power of language simultaneously.
If you could have a conversation with your 20-something self who wants to pursue a career in art, what three things would you suggest to her?
Read everything, anything that is in print. Whether it’s related to your work, or life, or the business behind what you do – read it. Get a job that supports both your intentions of being a poet or novelist or whatever you want to be, but that also supports yourself and family. Make sure it’s a job you like that also hopefully gives you chances to do the things you really want. And, gather around supporters who will help encourage the way you live and who will respect the love that you feel for your art.
Has there been an area or time in your life when you weren’t good with words?
I am a stutterer. I think stuttering was a way of protecting me after my grandmother died. Everyone was commenting that I had a speech difficulty. I quickly learned that we tend to leave people alone who are not fluent in our “language.” People stay away when think you’re odd and therefore it was a way of disconnecting from others.
Stuttering was a difficult time for me that I had to really work to overcome. In junior high and high school, I could always write, but I was not open with my words in the classroom. However, I found that when I memorized things and said them aloud, I didn’t stutter. When I graduated high school at sixteen and went to college, I was prepared and better able to protect myself – and then the stuttering disappeared.
Do you believe that there is a window of opportunity, and if we don’t take it, then it’s gone forever?
We get romantic about this one opportunity. We hear stories of those who had one “breath of opportunity” that came their way, and they jumped and succeeded. But some people aren’t given that. At some point, you have to see what is going on around you in a practical, and non-romantic sense. Whatever business you are in, use your sensors to alert you to the fact that this could possibly be a chance for you to advance. You always have to be in a continual state of study, always preparing, or for many of us even over-preparing. Most importantly you have to be prepared to participate in that “window of opportunity” when it’s presented to you.
How do you suggest someone navigate career highs and lows?
Sometimes you think, well, I’m really a good person, so I’m not going to have any ‘lows,’ but you learn that’s not promised to anyone. Good, decent people have sorrow, and everyone is going to have some lows. I have tried to examine those lows and use them in my art to show other people how you get move through it and get to another point. There is always that balance of high and low not only in our careers but in life.
The creator did not promise us perfection nor promise that we would not experience pain. We must put our pain into perspective and not let it take over and control our lives. Because on the other side of pain is joy and beauty. When you understand that and live accordingly, you experience life in a whole new way.
Can you talk about how we can be realistic in life, career, and our dreams?
There will be always someone who is better than you in a profession or in an art, and there will also be someone less than you. So you need to look at yourself, where you are, and determine if you are satisfied. If you want better, then that’s when you do the struggling, and the studying and working at it.
A young writer came to interview me after just having had a baby. She was saying how much work the baby was. I replied, “Yes, I know that.” [Laughter]. Then she started to cry. As I handed her tissues I said, “You’re crying because you’re not writing?” She said yes. I said, “Well, there are two things you can do. The baby will sometimes sleep during the day and you can make a choice either to sleep with the baby or to forgo sleep.” Sometimes I made that choice to forgo sleep.
While babies are in a playpen, you can have a notebook. I always had a notebook in my jacket pocket, and I would jot down thoughts. I would also read articles and my books out loud to my children. It’s a really hard road to walk, especially for women, because quite often we are working and are also taking care of the children – but you can do it.
What I said to her and would say to anyone is, dry your tears and this time next year, the baby will be a year older and your life will certainly be much better. Nothing is static, life is motion. When your child reaches a new stage, as a consequence so will you, too. Keep yourself open and when it’s the right time, you gather all those little notebooks and put them to great use.
What is one unconventional or quiet wisdom that you learned from someone?
Gwendolyn Brooks taught me something I will always remember. She got a Pulitzer Prize for writing very intellectual poetry, but she also wrote about her black experience. But while in her 60s, she met people like me and Haki [Madhubuti] and [Amiri] Baraka and wanted to write more like us. Isn’t that amazing? Well, she wanted to write like us without the curse words, that is. [Laughter].
This quiet woman made us understand, made our intellect speak and promote ourselves of what it was like to be black at that time in America. Gwendolyn Brooks put us on the world’s stage as human beings.
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About Sonia Sanchez:
Sonia Sanchez is a poet, mother, professor, and national and international lecturer on black culture and literature, women’s liberation, peace and racial justice. She is the recipient of the Robert Frost Medal for distinguished lifetime service to American poetry, Langston Hughes Poetry Award, and numerous U.S. and international awards. One of the most important writers of the Black Arts Movements, Sonia is the author of sixteen books.
Maya Angelou once said, “This world is a better place because of Sonia Sanchez: more livable more laughable, more manageable. I wish millions of people knew that some of the joy in their lives comes from the fact that Sonia Sanchez is writing poetry.”
Sonia proves that the thing we were born to do takes effort and planning, but is possible. Poetry is not what Sonia Sanchez does it is the basis for her being. She once wrote, when she first started writing, I wanted to tell how I became this woman with razor blades between her teeth. Well she has done that and then some. Sonia so eloquently reminds us that poetry is in everything we see and touch. “Poetry is in every bolt of lightning or cloud and allows us to remember what the cloud cannot forget. Poetry allows every part of nature, and perhaps every part ourselves, to come out and be noticed.” Although, we may not all have the ability or even desire to think and see everything in life with a poetic context – it is simply wonderful to sit back and appreciate those who do.
Sonia Sanchez holds a B.A. in Political Science from Hunter College and completed her postgraduate work at New York University. She is the mother (and grandmother) of 3 children. Follow Sonia at soniasanchez.net or Twitter @PoetSanchez