Interview of Sonia Sanchez, by Wanda Coleman & Nancy Shiffrin, November 17, 1986, Side 2
Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT)
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Sonia Sanchez: issues that people do not want to raise in order to move to another level.
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Um, I mean, it is, it is, it is beyond getting a Sandra O'Connor on the Supreme Court, you see.
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Nancy Shiffrin: A conservative woman!
Sonia Sanchez: That's what I mean!
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It is beyond that, you see.
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And many people - oh - it's beyond getting on the corporation, on the board of the corporation,
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and acting just like the men in their, being as inhumane as they are.
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And so, yes, I mean, there are issues, other issues that must be addressed,
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and will be addressed, in order for a viable, progressive feminist movement.
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But it becomes very obvious that in this country, the feminist movement was infiltrated,
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in fact, all the movements have been infiltrated from the progressive ones ,
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to bring it, to turn it in a way, that it would not deal with those issues of racism.
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Really affected the, the, you know, the really progressive issues and ideas, whatever.
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Because they're obvious, if you just look at it. And I think that things will be picked up by other people
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at some point to, you know, to move it again, and getting to take it out of the hands of people,
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who are like, stars in a sense, you know,
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Who just gather people around, let's all have a dinner
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some place and talk about how long can you come from.
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[[laughter]] And, that's about it.
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Wanda Coleman: You said you have a book coming out in the Spring.
Sonia Sanchez: Um-hmm.
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Wanda Coleman: Where do you see your work going?
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What are some of your long range projections?
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What do you see accomplishing in the coming decade?
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What's your ideal? You don't have to be too specific,
Sonia Sanchez: Right, yeah,
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Wanda Coleman: but just in terms of
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Sonia Sanchez: In March,
Wanda Coleman: what you want to cover.
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Sonia Sanchez: In March, in March, rather, Under a Soprano Sky,
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will be out. And I read, some, some of the pieces in there.
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That book has a long range of poems and sections all the way from
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the poems to my grandmother, the letters to my grandmother,
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it's a poem about Auschwitz.
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On to poems about a woman who lost her son,
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and I happened to be there and tried to breathe life back into his
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mouth and tasted his morning pancakes.
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And here, she asked me did I know, her question to me, did I know her son?
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And the whole point was
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Sonia Sanchez: with that you, and trying to breathe life back into his body, tasting his morning pancakes, of course I knew him.
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To pieces I talk about, move,
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and pieces that talk about trying to move in an upright fashion.
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I have pieces to ANC and Brandywine,
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a Peace Community, people that I support, actively.
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One of the peace movements in this country, and ANC, of course, you know, is in South Africa.
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Because I think they're one and the same, you understand, and I've very consciously have put them together.
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So I have a Haiku'ed about Osage Avenue,
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the MOVE thing, and also the same kind of about door knocking that we saw throughout South Africa.
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you know, and about the police on Osage Avenue and police in South Africa.
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Because they're one and the same
Nancy Shiffrin: They're parallel--
Sonia Sanchez: --in the way they move, right. So, yeah, I'm trying to hook up, I'm trying to connect
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with people, the similarities of oppression. That oppression is the same wherever we are.
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And we must learn how to organize and come up against that oppression wherever we are, or so to, wherever we live, be it on Osage Avenue, or be it in South Africa.
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Um. I'm doing a novel, I'm trying to finish up a novel this year.
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Um. And it's--it's a nov-- part of the Africa?? that I read,
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which talks about a woman, and her -- how she moves, and how she goes crazy, and how she comes up and,
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and finally is -- so -- it's like a novel -- that talks about women. And it's for women, about women.
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Trying to be - being crazy at the same time that they're sane. And needing to be, they must be, they must survive,
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because, I think that, uh, there are people who will, are really, reconstruct this world,
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once they decide to do that; you know, once they really realize that the peace they're after
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is not a piece of a multi-national corporation, you know what I'm saying?
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That the peace they're after, is really about world peace, and also peace on this earth
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and, we've all got to taste a little bit of this earth, you know, as we move and live here,
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on this earth. And, and it's beyond materialism.
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I was very serious when I said we have to purge capitalism from our dreams. It's an old dream. It's a tired, dying dr--
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Sonia Sanchez: that has wasted the almost entire earth with that greed. Whatever.
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We've got to deal in a veritable sense with that movement that keeps saying over and over again in as many ways I can say it,
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as beautiful as I can say it, and sometimes, as harshly as I can say it, also too.
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Wanda Coleman: What do you think are some of the most important lessons to be learned from our experience in the Sixties?
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In the Civil Rights Movement? And the weighing of that movement?
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Sonia Sanchez: Well, I think we've all done long analysis of the Sixties,
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and Seventies, and many of us have understood that
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almost from the very beginning there was infiltration in organizations.
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There were people put out there who were
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substitutes for you, um, for all of us, you know?
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People who looked like you and talked like you.
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They was real, what you find out from getting your papers in this country,
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is that they was real, that people, where other countries were at war with you.
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A lot of people didn't know that.
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They assumed that the country was not at war.
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But the country was actually at war, and was doing battle. Real battle. I mean,
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Nancy Shiffrin: It's like a Civil War?
Sonia Sanchez: CIA battle.
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I mean, all the way from infiltrators and people who would come and
Nancy Shiffrin: Agent Provocateurs
Sonia Sanchez: Agent Provocateurs
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all the way from banning people, whiteballing people,
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I mean, all the - you name it.
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Killing season. Real assassinations that happened.
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And the country's still at war.
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What happened to the liberation, the gay liberation movement in this country
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was AIDS, and that was on purpose.
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I mean that was literally dropped on, on people, you see.
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Um, and what we have is, is warfare
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from germ warfare, to all kinds of warfare going on,
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because legally, crazy people at the helm, at this particular point,
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and you know, how do you control people who got, have progressive ideas.
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I'm talking about particularly in cities, city councils, you know in San Francisco
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and talk about
Nancy Shiffrin: I'm reminded of Tuskegee
Sonia Sanchez: Oh yeah, oh yeah.
Nancy Shiffrin: I'm reminded of Tuskegee.
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Sonia Sanchez: That's right, you know.
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They discovered penicillin, and they did not, did not, did not
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Sonia Sanchez: give it to them. And when they asked why didn't you?
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Well, because we wanted to see, you know,
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Nancy Shiffrin: And that ravaged the body -
Sonia Sanchez: Can you imagine? That's the kind of mind- is what I'm talking about
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when I say, in that forum, on the June 12th disarmament.
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You know, we must, we must bring up scientists who are not inventing
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just for the sake of inventing, you know. And we have people who do that.
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Just for the sake. And that kind of mentality is being nurtured in this country, period.
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And that's dangerous. So we, you know, have got to reconstruct people.
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Ok, so we now literary people.
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How do we do this and eat, too?
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[SILENCE]
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{unknown speaker} Are you ok? Are we keeping you too long?
Sonia Sanchez: You wanna wrap this up soon?
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{unknown speaker} It's up to you.
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Nancy Shiffrin: Yeah, yeah I think she's really exhausted.
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{unknown speaker} We're wiping you out. You could probably finish it by phone if you have more questions.
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Sonia Sanchez: Yea, We can do it by phone. That would be perfect by phone. You have my home number?
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Nancy Shiffrin: No, I don't, I don't.
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Sonia Sanchez: You know, would you send me a copy of the tape - you know why? Because all the, all of the work,
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you know the Schomburg Library in New York?
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Wanda Coleman: Yes.
Sonia Sanchez: All the tapes that I do - Schomburg
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Wanda Coleman: They're collecting them.
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Sonia Sanchez: Yeah, my papers, right. And they want all that. So I get them and -
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If you can make a copy and send it, I'll make a copy and save one for myself and send one to them.
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So it will be in the Schomburg's. So when they come in, people can come in and listen to all the
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recorded things, the video things, and then also the papers at the same time.
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It's a huge thing so far. And it's driving me insane a little bit right now.
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{unknown speaker} To find all your rough drafts and things to give them?
Sonia Sanchez: In fact, I keep all my rough drafts. That was the easy part, because I keep all those little notebooks.
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So I have millions of notebooks. But, it was these things, sometimes,
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earlier, you know, I had to kinda like, go back
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and send letters to people saying, would you please send it directly there or forward to me?
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And then listening to some of the tapes, you know,
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all - it was like amazing, I'm like surprised this country
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let some of us come through, you know?
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{unknown speaker} Yeah.
Sonia Sanchez: Being out here on the West Coast, one of the -
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so far from the, all the literary currents, you don't
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Wanda Coleman: You don't really get a sense of what, you know, of what is happening.
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But-but judging from essence. Am I to believe my ears that there is,
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that the voices are coming together again and some of the squabbling has died down and black voices are starting to become a chorus again?
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Sonia Sanchez: I-I think, uh, that people are very serious about the organizing, you know, at this point.
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[speaker change] and well we're going to have a war in Nicaragua, you know that-- was Vietnam that, you know, really, uhm--
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it's just the same dynamic all over again. We are going to be sending people off to war. We are going to have a major war in Central America.
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Wanda Coleman: I mean really. I mean, when-- when you see what is happening and the problem is that you see it all over.
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I mean Nicaragua is an obvious one. That the war, that the CIA continues to do in other countries, you know?
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And in South Africa and all over, you know? How they control -- literally, control governments. Period.
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Wanda Coleman: Oh Sonia! [inaudible] -- you know that's tiredness. Stop and think of my home number, can you imagine?
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[[Cross Talk]]
