There is a widespread feeling that protest and politics are either inappropriate to literature or, if acceptable at certain times, the time for it has now passed. The whole course should be founded upon an acceptance of the fact that there are no a priori definitions for literature.
Poetry is what the poet writes or the audience claims as poetry.
Upon these premises, the study of Sonia Sanchez can proceed with attention to her idea of revolutionary poetry associated with nation building, as it was discussed in the 1960s and 1970s. The historical and political are boldly set out in Sanchez's poetry. The personal may be overlooked by the hasty reader, but the poetry develops a persona with a highly subjective voice conveying the impression of a real human being feeling her way to positions, struggling to make her expressive declarative writing conform to her intuitions and interior self. This tension once observed makes all the themes arranged around the black aesthetic and black politics also accessible. The point here is to see them associated with an aesthetic that privileges the oral and musical.