Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:18:29.027Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 3 - Breathing

Sonia Sanchez’s Call to Coalition Building

from I - Poetry and Music

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2022

Shelly Eversley
Affiliation:
Baruch College, The City University of New York
Get access

Summary

Against the backdrop of 2020’s global pandemic, we witnessed the brutal murder of George Floyd. His words “I can’t breathe” hang heavy in the air, haunting our contemporary moment, as the white police officer squeezes his breath out of him. It is with this urgency in mind that this chapter turns to Sonia Sanchez’s methodology of breath and breathing. The breath and breathing practice, as Sanchez explains, helps us to “be much more healthy and ... maintain this climate the way it needs to be maintained.” This essay aims to not only garner a greater understanding of the resonances among people of color across time and space but also moves toward coalition-building as a methodology for today’s time of crisis.

Type
Chapter
Information
African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
Black Art, Politics, and Aesthetics
, pp. 74 - 89
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Baraka, A. (L. Jones). 1965, July. “The Revolutionary Theatre.” Liberator 5: 46. nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai3/protest/text12/barakatheatre.pdf [accessed September 23, 2021].Google Scholar
Barcia, M. 2012. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825: Cuba and the Fight for Freedom in Mantanzas. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Barcia, M. “Black Playwrights Present New Plays.” 1970, October 17. New York Amsterdam News (1962–93): 20.Google Scholar
Brock, L. 1994. “Back to the Future: African-Americans and Cuba in the Time(s) of Race.” Contributions in Black Studies 12.1: 932.Google Scholar
Brock, L., and Castañeda Fuertes., D. 1998. Between Race and Empire: African-Americans and Cubans before the Cuban Revolution. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Childs, M. D. 2006. The 1812 Aponte Rebellion in Cuba and the Struggle against Atlantic Slavery. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, B. H. 2003. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Elam, H. 2005. Taking it to the Streets: The Social Protest Theater of Luis Valdez and Amiri Baraka. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Elam, H., and Krasner, D., eds. 2001. African American Performance and Theater History: A Critical Reader. Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Finch, A. K. 2015. Rethinking Slave Rebellion in Cuba: La Escalera and the Insurgencies of 1841–1844. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flood, J. 2014. The Fires: How a Computer Formula, Big Ideas, and the Best of Intentions Burned Down New York City – and Determined the Future of Cities. New York: Riverhead Books.Google Scholar
Guridy, F. A. 2010. Forging Diaspora: Afro-Cubans and African Americans in a World of Empire and Jim Crow. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, S. 1995. “New Ethnicities.” In The Post-Colonial Studies Reader, ed. Aschroft, B., Griffiths, G., and Tiffin, H, 223–28. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Haslip-Viera, G., and Baver, S., eds. 1996. Latinos in New York: Communities in Transition. University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Huerta, J. 1982. Chicano Theater: Themes and Forms. Ypsilanti, MI: Bilingual Press.Google Scholar
Jackson, R. 1998. Black Writers and Latin America: Cross-Cultural Affinities. Washington, DC: Howard University Press.Google Scholar
Joyce, J. A. 2007. “Interview with Sonia Sanchez: Poet, Playwright, Teacher, and Intellectual Activist.” In Conversations with Sonia Sanchez, ed. Joyce, J. A., 177206. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Kutzinski, V. M. 1985. “The Logic of Wings: Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Afro-American Literature.” Latin American Literary Review 13.25: 133–46.Google Scholar
Leibowitz, H. 2007. “Sonia Sanchez: An Interview.” In Conversations with Sonia Sanchez, ed. Joyce, J. A., 616. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Melhem, D. 2015. Heroism in the New Black Poetry: Introductions and Interviews. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Myers, P. C. 2013. “Frederick Douglass on Revolution and Integration: A Problem in Moral Psychology.” American Political Thought 2.1: 118–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pérez, L. A. Jr. 2014. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution. Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peterson, C. L. 1998. “Doers of the Word”: African-American Women Speakers and Writers in the North (1830–1881). New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Rivera-Rideau, P. R., Jones, J. A., and Paschel, T., eds. 2016. Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas. Palgrave Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ro, S. 1985. “‘Desercrators’ and ‘Necromancers’: Black American Writers and Critics in the Nineteen-Sixties and the Third World Perspective.Callaloo 25: 563–76.Google Scholar
Sanchez, S. 2010. I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays, ed. Wood, J. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sanchez, S. 2015. Homegirls and Handgrenades. Buffalo, NY: White Pine Press.Google Scholar
Sánchez Korrol, V. E. 1994. From Colonia to Community: The History of Puerto Ricans in New York City. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Sesay, K. 2007. “Interview with Sonia Sanchez: Poet, Joy of Writing Poetry.” In Conversations with Sonia Sanchez, ed. Joyce, J. A., 144–57. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.Google Scholar
Smallwood, S. 2008. Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Valdez, L. 1990. Early Works: Actos, Bernabe, and Pensamiento Serpentino. Houston, TX: Arte Público Press.Google Scholar
Ward, F., and G. Ward, V.. 1971. “The Black Artist – His Role in the Struggle.The Black Scholar 2.5: 2332.Google Scholar
Washington, M. 2009. Sojourner Truth’s America. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Wood, J. 2010. “Introduction: The Power Plays of Sonia Sanchez.” In Sanchez, S., I’m Black When I’m Singing, I’m Blue When I Ain’t and Other Plays, ed. Wood., J Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

  • Breathing
  • Edited by Shelly Eversley
  • Book: African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
  • Online publication: 10 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108386043.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

  • Breathing
  • Edited by Shelly Eversley
  • Book: African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
  • Online publication: 10 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108386043.006
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Breathing
  • Edited by Shelly Eversley
  • Book: African American Literature in Transition, 1960–1970
  • Online publication: 10 November 2022
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108386043.006
Available formats
×