African American Women Writers

An extraordinary retrospective covering over thirty years of work, Shake Loose My Skin is a stunning testament to the literary, sensual, and political powers of the award-winning Sonia Sanchez.

Sonia Sanchez is a prolific, award-winning poet and one of the most prominent writers in the Black Arts movement. This collection brings her plays together in one volume for the first time. Like her poetry, Sanchez's plays voice her critique of the racism and sexism that she encountered as a young female writer in the black militant community in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her ongoing concern with the well-being of the black community, and her commitment to social justice. In addition to The Bronx Is Next (1968), Sister Son/ji (1969), Dirty Hearts (1971), Malcolm/Man Don't Live Here No Mo (1972), and Uh, Uh; But How Do It Free Us? (1974), this collection includes the never-before-published dramas I'm Black When I'm Singing, I'm Blue When I Ain't (1982) and 2 X 2 (2009), as well as three essays in which Sanchez reflects on her art and activism. Jacqueline Wood's introduction illuminates Sanchez's stagecraft in relation to her poetry and advocacy for social change, and the feminist dramatic voice in black revolutionary art.

A representative collection of the life work of the much-honored poet and a founder of the Black Arts movement, spanning the 4 decades of her literary career. Gathering highlights from all of Sonia Sanchez's poetry, this compilation is sure to inspire love and community engagement among her legions of fans. Beginning with her earliest work, including poems from her first volume, Homecoming (1969), through to 2019, the poet has collected her favorite work in all forms of verse, from Haiku to excerpts from book-length narratives. Her lifelong dedication to the causes of Black liberation, social equality, and women's rights is evident throughout, as is her special attention to youth in poems addressed to children and young adults.

A diverse collection of engagements with poet, teacher, and activist Sonia Sanchez. While it is common to associate Sanchez with the Black Arts Movement of the 1970s, these interviews reveal that Sanchez is a poet whose craft and subjects have evolved over three decades. The interviews from 1979 to 2005 include a previously unpublished interview conducted by the editor specifically for this book. Taken together, the pieces illuminate Sanchez's conscious and consistent work at honing her craft, her skill at raising the highly political to the level of art, and her engagement with black studies and women's studies. In these interviews, we see how her travels, her career as a teacher, and her work as a mother, as a political activist, and as a cultural critic have changed her writing. Her experiences in women's studies and her friendships with other artists--such as Toni Morrison, Chinua Achebe, Margaret Walker, Ngugi wa Thiong'o, and Amiri Baraka--have all influenced her poetry.

A collection of interviews with Black women authors: Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alexis Deveaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margaret Walker, Sherley Anne Williams

Examines the ways in which black women playwrights in the movement advanced feminist and womanist perspectives from within black nationalist discourses. La Donna L. Forsgren recuperates the careers, artistic theories, and dramatic contributions of four leading playwrights: Martie Evans-Charles, J.e. Franklin, Sonia Sanchez, and Barbara Ann Teer. Using original interviews, production recordings, playbills, and unpublished manuscripts, she investigates how these women, despite operating within a context that equated the collective well-being of black people with black male agency, created works that validated black women's aspirations for autonomy and explored women's roles in the struggle for black liberation.