Originally named Wilsonia Benita Driver on September 9, 1934, poet Sonia Sanchez was reared in the American South. She was born in Birmingham, Alabama, and her mother died in childbirth when Sanchez was only a year old. Sanchez was reared by her grandmother until she also died when Sanchez was only six years old. At this time, she and her siblings returned to Harlem to live with their father, who was a schoolteacher. It was also at this time that Sanchez began to write. The loss of her grandmother and the development of a stutter prompted her to find expression through writing. In Harlem Sanchez learned the dialect of the street that would later characterize so much of her writing. In New York, she learned that racism was not confined to the South, although its northern manifestation was different.

Sanchez acquired much of her education in New York...