254 Culture, Identity, and Community: From Slavery to the Presentand personal life. Her radical views, and her subsequent ar-
rest at a strike at Manhattan Community College, caused
Sanchez to lose employment in the academic realm. In
1977, Sanchez moved out of New York to settle in Philadel-
phia, where she still lives today. She obtained a job teaching
at the University of Pennsylvania and later at Temple Uni-
versity, where she became the chair of the women’s studies
program.
Sanchez has delivered lectures and performed her po-
etry at more than 500 universities and colleges. Her books
of poetry, Homegirls and Handgrenades, won an American
Book Award in 1985, and in 1997, Does Your House Have
Lions, which was about her stepbrother, who died of AIDS
complications, was nominated for both an NAACP Image
Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her
ability to talk about such hard-hitting issues as poverty, rac-
ism, sexism, and rage has earned Sonia Sanchez the reputa-
tion of one of the most revered and accomplished poets of
our time.
See also: Black Arts Movement; X, MalcolmKaila A. StoryBibliography
Bean, Annemarie. A Sourcebook of African-American Performance:
Plays, People, Movements. New York: Routledge, 1999.
Nelson, Emmanuel Sampath. African American Dramatists: An A-
to-Z Guide. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing, 2004.
Sanchez, Sonia. Does Your House Have Lions? New York: Beacon
Press, 1998.
Sanchez, Sonia. Shake Loose My Skin: New and Selected Poems.
New York: Beacon Press, 2000.
Sanchez, Sonia. Wounded in the House of a Friend. New York: Bea-
con Press, 1995.
Sanchez, Sonia, and Joyce Ann Joyce. Conversations with Sonia
Sanchez. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.Shakur, Tupac
Tupac “2Pac” Amaru Shakur (1971–1996) was a prominent
American rapper and actor who, though born and raised in
New York and Baltimore, became synonymous with West
Coast “gangsta” rap during the 1990s.
Born Lesane Parish Crooks on June 16, 1971, his
name was quickly changed to Tupac Amaru Shakur by his
mother, prominent Black Panther activist Afeni Shakur.
Many critics and scholars have noted the contradictory orhyphens, diff erent spellings, and diff erent phonetic struc-
tures in her poetry, which made her poetry stand out for
its originality and passion for an alternative way of writing.
Sanchez also had a long career as an academic, helping
form the fi rst Black Studies program in the nation at San
Francisco State in 1965. She later went on to teach at the
University of Pittsburgh and became an assistant professor
at Rutgers from 1970 to 1971. Separating from the Broad-
side Quartet, Sanchez reformulated as an independent art-
ist, focusing more on black women and continuing to teach
courses at Manhattan Community College and City Col-
lege of the City University of New York.
In 1972, Sanchez went on to become an associate pro-
fessor at Amherst College. Being that Sanchez was a poet,
academic, and activist, she struggled to maintain her public
Poet Sonia Sanchez speaks during a news conference at the open-
ing of the “Freedom’s Sisters” exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum
Center, March 14 , 2008. Th e Smithsonian traveling exhibit tells the
story of 20 African American women who helped shape the Civil
Rights movement. (AP Photo/David Kohl)