Lucille Clifton and Sonia Sanchez
a conversation
Eisa Davis
Good evening. I'm Robert Polito, Director of the New School writing program, and it's my immense pleasure tonight to welcome you to this special evening of readings and conversation with Lucille Clifton, Sonia Sanchez and Eisa Davis. This evening is jointly sponsored by Cave Canem and the New School, and I want to thank everyone at Cave Canem, especially Carolyn Micklem, Sarah Micklem, Cornelius Eady, and Toi Derricotte.
This evening is planned as the first in an ongoing series of evenings with Cave Canem, and everyone at the New School is honored by the collaboration. Originating in 1996 as a vision of a retreat to support African-American poets, Cave Canem is a vital catalyst in the American poetry renaissance with a steadily expanding program of summer workshops, regional workshops, public readings and now public programs along the lines of this evening's convocation of two remarkable writers.
Lucille Clifton is a distinguished poet and teacher. She's the author of many books of poetry including Next: New Poems; Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir 1969-1980; An Ordinary Woman; Generation, Quiltings: Poems 1987 To 1991; The Book Of Light; and The Terrible Stories. She's the recipient of many honors including a 1999 Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers Award and on two occasions she was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She won the 2000 National Book Award for her latest collection, Blessing the Boats, New and Selected Poems 1988-2000.
Sonia Sanchez is an essayist, poet, teacher and activist. Her many books include Homecoming; We A BaddDDD People; Love Poems; A Sound Investment And Other Stories; Homegirls and Hand Grenades; Wounded In The House Of A Friend; Does Your House Have Lions?; Like The Singing Coming Off The Drums; and Shake Loose My Skin. Her many honors include an American Book Award, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, the Langston Hughes Award for Poetry, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and, on this stage just last spring, she was awarded the Robert Frost Medal by the Poetry Society of America.
The moderator this evening is Eisa Davis. She is a poet, performer and playwright; her play "Paper Armor" will be read at the Langston Hughes Centenary Conference at Yale in February.
So please join me now in welcoming Lucille, Sonia, and Eisa.
[Applause] [End Page 1038]
DAVIS: Well, I wanted to welcome everyone and thank you all for coming. We know that Toi Derricotte could not make it tonight and we want to send our blessings to her and to her family. I know she'll feel every wonderful word that these two pillars will speak tonight and this is the—
SANCHEZ: Did you get that we're pillars?
DAVIS: Pillars of literature.
SANCHEZ: We got it, we're gonna mess with you; right, you're our student, so we can mess with you.
DAVIS: You can, that's right, and this is Cave Canem, so we're going to do this all the right way. And I think some of you here know what that means. So this is the vanguard, the Cave Canem people out there to keep it all live and keep the love flowing.
SANCHEZ: Tell them to raise their hands, the Cave Canem people.
DAVIS: Cave Canem people, could you raise your hands by Sonia's request? [applause] So we're gonna have a reading tonight: first Lucille Clifton will read, and then Sonia Sanchez will read, and then we'll have a conversation here, followed by a Q&A in which you will be able to ask some questions from the audience. Afterwards there'll be an opportunity to purchase some books and have them signed.
SANCHEZ: Is this the 10-minute reading?
DAVIS: Yes, and I think what I wanted to say before we begin is that our work tonight is listening and that our play tonight is also listening and that this conversation series was inaugurated because Cave Canem members and faculty believed, particularly after the deaths of Barbara Christian, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Dudley Randall, that our ancestors while living needed to tell their stories one more time for those who hadn't heard them. And so as part of that cause, I wanted to preface what we do tonight by saying just a few words about my grandmother.
She spent most of her life in Birmingham, Alabama, which is where Sonia was born, and she raised me and she served us breakfast, she packed us lunch, she made us wash the dishes after dinner, she had four kids, and she taught elementary school for over 30 years, and she was involved with the fight and the struggle for the Scottsboro boys, and she was an activist when she met my grandfather. She wanted to continue, but he wanted her to stay home and be safe. And she did and she did that exceedingly well, and I think that these women tell her story. Both of you who have raised children and taught and who write poetry and teach activism—you've written it all down for us, all of us, and so tonight we thank you for telling these stories. Never bitter, never sweet, always steady, embracing, clear as water, your work nourishes us and knocks us against the rocks sometimes with its power. We thank you for teaching us not only [End Page 1039] in classrooms and in your books but in how you walk, how you cook, how you wear your hair and for your bravery, which is as relentless as music. We are training ourselves to fill your shoes, so tonight we ask you to show us the compass and the river. And our pens will cast shadows by your moons.
SANCHEZ: Beautiful . . . [applause] Lucille and I just want to correct one thing. How we used to cook! [laughter]
CLIFTON: How we used to walk.
DAVIS: So now if you'd like to begin your reading . . .
CLIFTON: I would like to take a risk and read some poems—ending with some poems—written after September 11th. And it is a risk and they may not be very good poems and I'm going to read them anyway. [Laughter and applause]
First, I'd like to acknowledge our sister and friend Toi Derricotte who is modeling once again for us what it means to be human, who understood that, when her mother died, her place was with her family and there in the space her mother lived in. And I congratulate her, and know that she is here with us, know that we are there with her.
This is a poem about my sister. I had a sister who was a prostitute, and she was a very good prostitute. My mother used to be a little embarrassed that we would visit my sister (for a while she lived in a brothel), but as she would say when other people would ask "Why do they come and see you?"—she would say, "We're family," and that made sense. I want to say that in the poem I mention someone and that what you should know is that his name was not Richard.
Here
rests my sister
Josephine born July in '29
and dead these 15 years
who carried a book on every stroll
when daddy was dying
she left the streets
and moved back home
to tend him her pimp came too
her diamond dick
and they would take turns
reading the bible aloud
through the house
when you poem this
and you will
she would say
remember the book of Job [End Page 1040]
happy birthday and hope to you
Josephine
one of the east's most wanted
may heaven be filled
with literate men
may they bed you
with respect
[Applause]
This next poem—somebody said it didn't sound like me, but it is me, and it is written for Nokosi Johnson. Do you know who Nokosi Johnson was? Born February 4, 1989, dead June 1, 2001, [he was] a young child on the African continent who died of AIDS and who was a great spokesperson for AIDS, the scourge that is terrorizing that part of the world.
stop
what you are doing
stop
what you are not doing
stop
what you are seeing
stop
what you are not seeing
stop
what you are hearing
stop
what you are not hearing
stop what you are believing
stop
what you are not believing
in the green hills
of Hemingway
Nokosi has died again
and again
and again
stop
[Applause]
One of the things that I really believe is that we are all capable of great good and great evil. In America's culture we like to think that for some reason we can tell the bad people. Not only, I guess, because they wear bad people t-shirts or something, but we think we are the good people and they are the bad people, without realizing that we [End Page 1041] are all capable of great good and great evil. Knowing that allows us to work toward the good if we can, and this is a poem—now I read this poem somewhere and somebody thought I was talking about their child—I assure you I am not. I don't write about other people's children. I've got enough babies to write about my own and also I have a new granddaughter. I'm very proud of her. Every mother looks down at her child and thinks "this is the one." I did it lots of times. But anyway this is called "The Baby."
The Baby
perhaps he'll be an artist
the way his fingers
feel my hand
how his eyes follow colors
in the room
until they settle themselves at white
and while he has not laughed
perhaps a scholar then
lifting our name
in universities across the world.I suppose I am dreaming
as any mother would
I know this
he is mine own
I can teach him to smile
my love will bunker him through
though who can know
what fate decrees
Gunther
I will call him Gunther
no Adolf
yes
Adolf
[Audience laughter]
I've never heard anybody laugh about that before. I don't know what it means—you'll all have to tell me after. I think it's an old poem, but I don't think it's appeared in a book.
Long ago, you may remember the name Rodney King, and he's had many escapades but long ago, one of the officers who beat Rodney King was a man called Officer Powell and one of the things I also try to do is understand the other. I tried to understand, if I can, why this person behaved in this way and this is a poem called "Powell." It is written in the voice of that person. It has an epigram, what I overheard a black man saying to a white man: "I am your worst nightmare." This is Powell speaking. [End Page 1042]
Powell
I am your worst nightmare.
This is that dream I wake from crying
then clutch my sleeping wife
and rock her until I fall again
onto a battlefield
here they surround me
nations of darkness
speaking a language
I can not understand
and something about my life
they know and hate and I
hate them for knowing it so well
my son—I think about my son
my golden daughter
and as they surround me
nearer, nearer I reach to pick up anything
a tool, a stick, a weapon
and something begins to die
this is that dream
[Applause]
Thank you. This is something that was written in Squaw Valley. In reading the guidebook, the lodge guidebook, there was a story about John Freemont and Kit Carson, who discovered Lake Tahoe in 1844. So the title is from the lodge guidebook.
In 1844 explorers John Freemont and Kit Carson discovered
Lake Tahoein 1841 Washo children danced like otters
in the lake
their mothers rinsed red beadsin 1842 Washo warriors began to dream
dried bones and hollow reeds
they woke clutching their shieldsin 1843 Washo elders began to speak
of grasses hunched in fear
and heard thunder sticks over the mountainin 1844 Freemont and Carson . . . [End Page 1043]
These are some poems that wanted to be written, and I was available. [laughter] It isn't that funny.
Tuesday nine eleven '01thunder and lightning
and our world is another place
no day will ever be the same
no blood untouched
they know this storm
in other wheres
Israel, Ireland, Palestine
but God has blessed America
we sing
and God has blessed America
to learn
that no one is exempt
the world is one
all fear is one
all life
all death
all one
[Applause]
Wednesday nine twelve '01This is not the time, I think
to note the terrorist inside
who threw the brick into the mosque
this is not the time to note
the ones who cursed God's other name
the ones who threatened they would fill
the streets with Arab children's blood
and this is not the time, I think
to ask who is allowed to be American
America, all of us gathered under one flag
praying together, safely
under the single love
of the many named godThursday nine thirteen
The firemen
ascend [End Page 1044]
in a blaze of courage
rising, like jacobs ladder
into the mouth
of history
reaching through hell
in order to find heaven
or what ever the river jordan is called
in their heroic house.Friday nine fourteen
Some of us know
we have never felt safe
all of us
Americans
weeping as some
have wept before
Is it treason to remember?
What have we done
to deserve such villainy?
Nothing
we reassure ourselves
Nothing.
[Applause]
Saturday nine fifteenI know a man
who perished for his faith
others called him infidel
chased him down
and beat him like a dog
after he died
the world was filled
with miracles
people forgot he was a Jew
and loved him
who can know what is intended?
who can understand the gods?
As I said, I have a new little granddaughter. She was born one week before the tragedies and one year and a week after my second daughter died. [End Page 1045]
Sunday morning nine sixteen
for BaileyThe Saint Mary's River flows
as if nothing has happened
I watch it with my coffee
afraid and sad, as are we all
so many ones to hate
and I, cursed with long memory
cursed with a desire
to understand
have never been good at hatingnow this new granddaughter
born into a violent world
as if nothing has happened
and I am consumed with love
for all of it
the everydayness of bravery
of hate, of fear, of tragedy
of death and birth and hope
true as this river
and especially, with love
Bailey Frederica Clifton Goin
for you
And finally:
Monday sundown nine seventeenRoshashana which is the Jewish New Year.
I bear witness to no thing more human than hate,
I bear witness
to no thing more human than love
apples and honey
apples and honey
what is not lost
is paradise
[Applause]
SANCHEZ: Thank you very much. It is so good being here, most especially because we have so many people that we know, in this place called New York City. I think we all kept a journal, every day. I'm not going to read it because I think, at some point, [End Page 1046] I want to talk—maybe—about where we are in this place called New York City and where we've got to be. Because at some point we mourn, and at the same time we've got to live. We've got to understand also at some point that we can't give up the things that we need to be human and those things are, indeed, our rights, our civil liberties.
[Applause]
And I hope we don't give it up willingly. Okay.
I call on living and ago ancestors, Toni Cade Bambara, Vincent Harding, Barbara Deming, Angela Davis, Elizabeth Catlett, Maurice Bishop, Nat Turner, Maya Angelou, Shirley Graham Du Bois, Mister Micheaux, Gandhi, Gwendolyn Brooks, Amiri Baraka, Diop, Dorothy Day, June Jordan, Ida Wells Barnett, Ella Baker, Chris Hani, Oliver Tambo, Chavez, Odetta, Bernice Reagon, Du Bois, C.L.R. James, Fannie Lou Hamer, Victoria Grey, Sitting Bull, Sister Lebrón, Paul Robeson, Geronimo, Jose Martí, David Walker, Margaret Walker, Alice Walker, Walter Rodney, Nkrumah, Sojourner Truth, William Wells Brown, Sterling Brown, John Brown, Dada and Mama Sisulu, Mandela Nelson and Winnie, Martin Luther King, Audre Lorde, Ngugi Wa Thiong'o, Viola Plummer, Ruby Doris, Frantz Fanon, Robert Moses, Queen Mother Moore, Septima Clarke, Bobby Sands, Patrick Hill, Toni Morrison, Malcolm, Chinua Achebe, James Baldwin, Pam Africa, Ramona Africa, Lucille Clifton.
This is the letter I wrote to Chinua Achebe on his 70th birthday:
Dear Chinua, it is today. Not yesterday. Hoy ha llegado. Today has arrived. Sometimes I have gotten lost in this journey called today, where nothing moved, when I gathered up the country's hysteria, when I looked at the world's delirium, when I saw Africa try to disagree with its blood. But I always remembered your voice, feasting on rain and laughter across telephone wires as you talked, your voice a prayer in exile, pushing past the débris of human sacrifice.
This new century appeared, my brother, a fragile bird caught in its past wing flow. This new century arrived and we saw death, beboppic death, peeling our skins down to the minerals in our blood plasma. And I asked you question after question, distracted by the scandal of whores accessorizing our flesh with newly minted bullets. Where are we on this food chain of life to be eaten so easily, century after century, decade after decade? Are these meditations of insane saints from a take-out menu, imperializing our taste buds till we sweat, crouched junkies, vomiting into the ears of our unborn fetuses? Are we like Okonkwo fated to end hanging from a morning sky of death? Are we always frightened of being our father's son? Our father's daughter? I had a dream last night where tongues, leotarded tongues, pirouetted buildings like hummingbirds and wagons with children's legs circled the campfires of our founding fathers. But I awoke breathing an avalanche of air, remembering that James Arthur Baldwin had called Okonkwo Father, had said, "That man is my father. I don't know how he got over here but he did." [End Page 1047]How to recognize our fathers, even when they behave opportunistically, even when their hands hold up, as you said, "The colonial belief that the ruler doesn't have to be responsible to his people."
This is the right time for comedy, I think. I miss the wandering spirit, the blue black gusts, out-of-control humor of Richard Pryor, prioritizing the hunchbacked pain of a people, catching our afflictions as we ascend in throbbing laughter at ourselves, opening up our hearts to the possibility of butterflies.
A coon show crouches over the land though, and we get lost in this greenhouse contagion of money belts growing out of armpits, mumbo jumbo sambos dancing in tune to what I yam, I yam, a fat hand getting fatter, getting fatter, getting fatter. What I yam, I yam . . .
Everything trembles in early morning dawn. The day almost freezes in little patches of purple, and I wonder if this day will burn down the blue from the sky? How many dawns can hold a people? I return to your genius, my brother. I ask you to tell me about the genesis of your book Things Fall Apart. I want an easy way of explaining this. I am part American, in thought, you know. What is the continent's chi? What is Okonkwo's chi? What is America's chi? I ask, Is it good or bad? And your Igbo teeth smile. "Yes, it is this, Sonia, but it is also that. So that you know life is not simple. The Igbo are anxious not to put it all on your chi. The cards were stacked against Okonkwo. I mean, his father was not successful, so Okonkwo had this fear in him that he was actually his father's son and that was what scared him. That is why he was fighting so relentlessly to kill that possibility of his father resurfacing in him. Whether you call it genes or fate, Okonkwo knew he was this man's son and he wanted to be as different from his father as he could be. So he exaggerated everything. He heard the loud sounds: bravery, success, wisdom, strength, but not compassion. He failed to hear the subtle admonition of his culture, which is that it's wonderful to be brave. But remember also that the coward outlives the brave man. This legacy of colonial rule is not something we can just shake off one morning, Sonia, and say now it's over. There are many things we must unlearn and learn how to be free."
—Amen Amen Awoman Awoman
When one day our children's children ask, "What did you do?" When they rise like the Guatemalan poet Rene Castillo rose and asked us what we did "when our nations dried out slowly like a sweet fire small and alone." When they ask us, "What did you do when the poor suffered, when tenderness and life burnt out of them?" We, the lovers of selves, the lovers of people, the lovers of justice will turn and say, "We resisted. We resisted the ego. We resisted the gossip, the rumor in ourselves. We resisted the greed, the people imperialist in ourselves. We resisted the exaggeration, the hatred of selves and others. We resisted the quick killings and quick retaliations of others. We resisted war, we resisted war, we resisted war. Can you do it? Can you resist? Can you say it? Can you resist? Can you remember? Can you resist? Resist, resist, resist. [End Page 1048]
Black voters in Florida, can you resist? Can you remember 41 bullets? Can you say 41 bullets? Can you remember, cccccccccccccccan you resssssist, even in this death, can you resist???????????????
[Applause]
I'm going to do a striptease in a minute. [Sanchez fixes a problem with her skirt to audience laughter.] I got it, thanks, I'm trying to keep this—I can only wear long skirts and wrap arounds because of this broken foot. Mos Def said, speech is my hammer, bang my world into shape, now let it fall. That's a bad brother.
These are some remarks I gave when I got an honorary degree at a place called Temple University where I taught for 22 years.
[Applause]
President Liacouras, Provost, Deans, trustees, students, parents, guests, fellow participants on this stage.How can I bind you together, my brothers and sisters?
How can I bind your old wounds so that they stay dormant until newer surgical methods come about?
How can I bind you together, my brothers and sisters, away from Racism. Sexism. Homophobia. Exploitation. Militarism. Extreme materialism.
Toward unity,
with varying shades of color moving the world in tune to sanity,
love for self and others'
respect for self and others,
ambition without exploitation.How can I weave you into a rainbow symmetry, letting your brown, yellow, white and black laughter sprinkle our lives with non-destructive tints?
How can I bind you Asians. Latinos. Whites. Africans. African-Americans. Jews. Chicanos. Muslims. Lesbians. Gays. Into a future world away from the Orwellian image of the future of a boot smashing a human face forever?
How can I bind you to responsibility in a non-responsible world?
How can I bind you to yourselves so that you know the human face will triumph over the boot forever? [End Page 1049]
Perhaps through telling you that if we drop our twin seasons of privilege and inferiority, we will see a world free of myths and social ills.
If we act in the interest of world humanity. If we help improve life for our sisters and brothers in our country and in the world.
Then we will truly move as human beings
standing upright in a world that is fed by passions of greed and envy and jealousy and hatred;
You are an important generation to us, my brothers. My sisters. You have come to us through centuries of man's, woman's inhumanity to man, woman.
I say, listen to Tolstoy:
there are men who say,
I sit on a man's back,
choking him
and making him
carry
me and yet
I assure myself
and others
that I am sorry
for him and wish
to lighten his load
by all possible means
except by getting off his back.You are important to us because the earth can no longer hold those people who choke or who are choked.
We need you, my brothers and sisters, to learn to build, to lead, to educate, to respect, to love,
but in a way that your eyes take on different landscapes and become more human.For if we lose you to Saturday afternoon murders, extreme materialism, drugs, alcohol, selfishness
if we lose you to Wars. Pollution. Red, white and blue rhetoric.
Germ warfare.
Then we are finished.And I, for one, shall not give you up to a life of just three cars, two and a half children, and four martinis before dinner. [End Page 1050]
You didn't ask to be born at this point. At this time. But you are here
looking at the 21st century
and you must look it squarely in the eye so that there will be a 22nd century.Your fate is to be blessed and burdened with knowledge that no other generation has known or tasted.
You will walk with a technology that stuns the mind;
You will walk with a history of Africans jumping screaming into an ocean in protest to that obscenity called slavery in the Americas;
You will walk with a history of Native Americans defending their country against invaders, walking their blue death walk of relocation;
You will walk with a history of Jews and others dying in concentration camps, their children moving in a rain of ash unraveling minds;
You walk with the Japanese in Hiroshima where open flesh was replaced with commemorative crust;
You will walk with madmen goose-stepping in tune to Guernica;
You will walk with Africans slaughtering two hundred thousand in four months in Rwanda;
You will walk with the slaughter and rapes in Bosnia, the many massacres of the spirit and body;
You will walk with New York City startled by the blood in steel and glass skyscrapers, the morning whispering wings of precocious human birds in an avalanche of smoke;You will walk with drugs in suburbia, North Philadelphia, South Philadelphia, Manhattan, the Bronx, Beverly Hills, Park Avenue.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Here s/he is. Step right up, step right up, step right up, right up. A good sale on girls and boys today. Now give me my crack-crack-crack-crack-crack-ing my mind.
We must finally say, I hear your daughter's laughter in the wind, I see your son riding in the morning waves there in our eyes and we never let these intoxicating ideas of race superiority, economic superiority, social superiority, sexual superiority, religious superiority, terrify the earth until it swallows itself whole again.
Your fate today as you begin your walk toward abundance is to say, I remember, I remember. I shall always wear memory on my forehead, I shall never forget the earth. The sea. The people. Love for peace. Justice. And truth. I shall always be arriving, as I am today, a ceremony of thunder waking up the earth
and if you do, if we do, then we know it will get better on this earth.
EBE YIYE.
It'll get better. [End Page 1051]
So I say to you new graduates on this taffeta day, dropping blue white sapphires,
Inaugurate, across the sound of your words
not symbols and serums,
not peepholes and posturing,
not lesions and lechery,
Inaugurate a new day, a new way for all Americans and people.
Inaugurate like new men and women should, coming out of themselves toward peace and racial, sexual and social justice.
So come with yourselves, singing lifeeeee, singing eyessss, singing handssss.
Alarming the death singers for we have come to celebrate life.
Until we become seeing men and women again,
Until we become seeing men and women again,
Inaugurate a new way of breathing for the world,
a new way of breathing for the world,
and it will get better.
EBE YIYE! EBE YIYE! EBE YIYE!
It'll get better! It'll get better! It'll get better!
[Applause]
DAVIS: I wanted to read one of Toi Derricotte's poems from Captivity for her and for her mother. It's called "Christmas Eve: My Mother Dressing."
My mother was not impressed with her beauty;
once a year she put it on like a costume,
plaited her black hair, slick as cornsilk, down past her hips,
in one rope-thick braid, turned it, carefully, hand over hand,
and fixed it at the nape of her neck, stiff and elegant as a crown,
with tortoise pins, like huge insects,
some belonging to her dead mother,
some to my living grandmother.
Sitting on the stool at the mirror,
she applied a peachy foundation that seemed to hold her down, to trap her,
as if we never would have noticed what flew among us unless it was weighted and bound in its mask.
Vaseline shined her eyebrows,
mascara blackened her lashes until they swept down like feathers;
her eyes deepened until they shone from far away.Now I remember her hands, her poor hands, which, even then were old from scrubbing,
whiter on the inside than they should have been,
and hard, the first joints of her fingers, little fattened pads,
the nails filed to sharp points like old-fashioned ink pens, painted a jolly color. [End Page 1052]
Her hands stood next to her face and wanted to be put away,
prayed
for the scrub bucket and brush to make them useful.
And, as I write, I forget the years I watched her
pull hairs like a witch from her chin, magnify
every blotch—as if acid were thrown from the inside.But once a year my mother
rose in her white silk slip,
not the slave of the house, the woman,
took the ironed dress from the hanger—
allowing me to stand on the bed, so that
my face looked directly into her face,
and hold the garment away from her
as she pulled it down.
[Applause]
DAVIS: So how are you? [laughter]
SANCHEZ: Fine. How are you? We're still alive.
DAVIS: What do you want to talk about?
SANCHEZ: What do you want to talk about? Lucille, we're still alive.
CLIFTON: It was a triumph.
SANCHEZ: We're still warrior women.
CLIFTON: It's a great blessing.
SANCHEZ: And you've got to be warrior people out there. You just can't give in to fear. You know, hey, you've got to be warrior people out there, okay? You can't give in to fear. Isn't that so, you New Yorkers? I'm a New Yorker, you're New York people, okay? C'mon New Yorkers, don't give in to fear, alright? Right, and some of them people down there, it's still funny in Washington, okay? And that's why I love Aaron Magruder. Don't you love that young brother? "Boondocks."
CLIFTON: Oh my, yes, he's from Columbia, Maryland—he's from my town.
SANCHEZ: That's an amazing young brother, and people are writing saying how terrible that he's talking about America in a time of tragedy, right? But you should write, you should call, just call, you know, they really do get on the telephone. Just go, [End Page 1053] "Hey, hi, I love Boondocks," hang up. [laughter] But do it in the midst of emergencies. We still must have the poets who would tell the truth, the cartoonists who would tell the truth, and people who go to work who will turn around and tell the truth about the country, about the city, about the world, period. I'm not a sentimentalist. You know I don't believe in sentimentality. I look up and say, "Okay, right, I mourn like everyone else mourned that morning as I sat and watched the destruction." The first thing that came to my mind was, "I'm so glad my father's not alive cause he couldn't process this." That's what I thought, you know, "he can't process this, he cannot process this," because it was difficult for us to process—if you understand truly—and then I thought about what we were, about some of the environmentalists, who were against the building of those two buildings . . .
CLIFTON: Yeah, that's right.
SANCHEZ: I thought about all that disservice—my son standing next to me, I was sitting down glued. I said, "You know, I remember we fought against this." And then I said, "I got used to those buildings when I was coming into New York. I used to look on the right side on the train, and look cause once I saw it, I knew I had five minutes to pack up my briefcase.
[Laughter]
You know and you got used to it.
CLIFTON: Yeah, that's what I did today.
SANCHEZ: Yeah, you look for it.
CLIFTON: The thing that I think is interesting, too, is, if you really, really examine yourselves, your lives, when have you not been afraid? When have you not been afraid? Three times, twice?
SANCHEZ: Three, I think. Three times.
CLIFTON: In how many years? 40?
SANCHEZ: In forty years . . . [laughter]
CLIFTON: You're lucky. If it brought you to caring, what a blessing—because we have to care. I don't believe I called it a blessing but when you think about the fact that everybody, when the ship goes down—it doesn't matter if you happen to be brown or black and whatever your father's name. When you go back where you came from, you've got to watch people and then you have to listen to people debate whether profiling in this situation is different from profiling on the highway. [End Page 1054]
SANCHEZ: Right.
CLIFTON: Surely we know about that, surely we know about this. Surely this is not new on the planet, but we go on, we go on.
SANCHEZ: When black folks wouldn't say it out loud, they said it in the hallways of their homes, in the doorway in the beauty parlors, in the barbershops, but never out loud, you know. Because I'm not a revisionist; when he [Malcolm] said it out loud, I ducked.
[Laughter]
SANCHEZ: Like everybody, I went, "Whoa, don't say that out loud—people are listening, you know what I mean." And he said, "Yeah, yeah they are listening, they should be listening." And the joy of him is that when people, when they begin to change history, they become revisionist. People don't understand that whites, blacks, everybody loved Malcolm. See people, ya'll—some of you young ones—don't realize that [when] you get the history. I remember following him around and, at every university he went to, the majority of people there were white, and they stood up and clapped and stamped their feet for this man. Some of you older people there know that's true. You know and blacks were cringing at that time, like, "Oh no, don't say that, don't say that, don't say that, don't say that." [laughter]
But it is a terrible thing to realize—that's why I say at some point too—that you can't live in fear. I'm not saying you don't recognize it, but you can't cringe in fear. You know what you gotta say, like one of the things you said in that exquisite poem, "that some of us have lived in this fashion for years" . . . all our lives, whatever. Dick Gregory said once in a speech, he said, "America is now making niggers out of us all." Hear that? He said, "Once upon a time, only blacks were 'the niggers of the world'; now America has made niggers of us all. Like everybody now, you know, because you're expendable. Working-class people are expendable. Maybe even the lower middle class is expendable. You know what I mean—maybe even the middle class. We have to figure that one out, you know, with the machines, whatever. But look at us—on that level, you have to begin to think what that really means.
But I think maybe some of the students want to hear something about Lucille and myself, like when we first met. What I remember is that I first met you at a place called Baltimore when I came to do a reading at Morgan State and you were reading also, and I remember you at that time, meeting you at that time, and then you came down to Margaret Walker's.
CLIFTON: Oh yes, I remember that, and what I remember was everybody was like . . . there were these women writers, and we were all so cool. I mean we were just so very cool.
[Laughter] [End Page 1055]
SANCHEZ: 1973.
CLIFTON: Yes—big earrings, you know, all of that, and then on the last day—I don't know if you remember this—Sonia had her program and said, "I wanna get autographs." And we were much too cool for that—but then everybody ran and got their programs. We got autographs for all of you.
SANCHEZ: Because it was about history and herstory every place we were. Sometimes I stumble over autographed napkins. You know, once in Chicago, Shirley Graham DuBois, a bunch of people were in Chicago at the same time, performing together. Shirley Graham DuBois, Gwendolyn Brooks, we were all on this one napkin. We all signed our names and I looked at that napkin and thought, "Oh gosh, look at this. I mean look at this," and that's the history. You're right. I mean, if we've got a program here, I'll pass it to everybody to do that—because we need to remember some of those things and those places.
I know one of the things that I always remember; I talked to Miss Margaret, Margaret Walker that is, about the program. She wanted to know how it was, and I remembered everyone reading together, the respect we had for each other, and there were about twenty African-American women in one place in 1973 in Jackson, Mississippi. And it was recorded in either Negro Digest or Black World.
CLIFTON: It was still Negro Digest then.
SANCHEZ:Negro Digest. Get that one—that is worth a whole lot of money if you can find it
CLIFTON: [laughter] If you can find it!
SANCHEZ: Because it was an amazing, amazing group of people. But 'Lucille' means 'light,' isn't that so?
CLIFTON: Yes.
SANCHEZ: Well, someone asked about some of the similarities—a sister from the Continent told me that 'Sonia' means 'light,' so we are quite related.
CLIFTON: We know this.
SANCHEZ: We know this.
CLIFTON: But I have a photograph still from that conference in Jackson and we're singing. It's me, June Jordan, Audre Lorde and Alice Walker and we're singing, and I bet you can't find that photograph anywhere. [End Page 1056]
SANCHEZ: No, you can't.
CLIFTON: And we were young. And thin. [laughter] Let's don't go there.
DAVIS: And that was the first time you met? Had you encountered each other's work before then?
CLIFTON: Yes.
DAVIS: What was that story?
CLIFTON: I don't know—wasn't she always there?
SANCHEZ: No, we had read each other's work, and we had taught. The interesting thing about teaching in those early days, we started teaching all the way back, at least I did, in the late 1960s at San Francisco State and what that meant is that we took into the English department all these black folks . . .
CLIFTON: . . . who had not been there.
SANCHEZ: And then we turned around and brought in the other people. I brought in Neruda, I brought in Guillén—they weren't teaching these people. We brought in DuBois. You know America had successfully boycotted Robeson, DuBois, Garvey. And I tell this story—at San Francisco State I was home this day with my Samoyed. I had a Samoyed and I was getting used to it . . . my next door neighbor had brought this big Samoyed and said, "Here, here you need protection," and left this big dog, and I looked at the dog for about two days and kept saying, "If I feed him, maybe he won't eat me up!" [laughter] But there was a knock at the door and I opened the door, and this man said "FBI." And I said, "Yes?" And there was another guy with the landlord, and he turned to the landlord and he said, "Put her out, put her out, put her out." And the landlord said, "She's there teaching," and the FBI agent said, "DuBois, Garvey, Robeson." I said, "Yes." Now I'll tell you how innocent we were when we first went into teaching Black literature. How naïve. I said, "Yes, I'm teaching Black Literature." [laughter] And this man looked at me like "what kind of fool are you?" You know he said, "You're one of those radicals. Put her out of this place." And the guy [the landlord] said, "Well, she has a lease." He said, "Put her out of this place, put her out of this place." He was livid. And I'm looking at this man and he put his finger in my face again, and the Samoyed leaped for him—"Woof!" [laughter]—and I looked at that dog and I said, "Snow." You know, even I was impressed with Snow. Snow came back and sat down, and I didn't realize that dog would protect in that fashion. They left, and I'm walking down the hallway and I'm petting Snow and I said, "Oh, I've been teaching it wrong." I was teaching literature, thematically. I said, "Sonia, you've got to teach the sociology of the literature, the economics of the literature, the culture of the literature." And I thank that FBI man, wherever he is today, for teaching me how to teach literature. We were taught the other way. [End Page 1057]
He was angry because we had rescued DuBois. In America nobody taught DuBois. People in America, they didn't teach him; they were scared to teach him because he was on the list. No one taught Robeson—they were too scared to teach Robeson. But you can't teach history without teaching DuBois, Black Reconstruction. You don't know America without reading Black Reconstruction, people.
Years later I was at my father's house. He had a stroke here in this place called New York City, and I went in and he wasn't speaking. I believe if you touch, if you rub the limbs, [you] bring the life back in, so I was rubbing him but I'm also working on my memoirs, so I'm talking out loud. I kept saying to everyone who comes in, "Talk, keep talking, keep talking," so I'm saying "You know, Dad, it's so funny." I said, "You know, I'm there in San Francisco and this FBI man comes and points his finger and says, 'you're teaching DuBois' and he was angry at that." And I'm just talking, and this man, my father, leans forward, opens his eyes, and says, "What you expect, girl, they communist." [Laughter]
CLIFTON: I remember getting a letter from Langston [Hughes], and it came to my father's house, and my father was sitting there. I went by there for something, and my father was sitting there with the letter in his lap looking at me. And he had known this was gonna happen, I'm sure. And he said, "You got a letter from a communist, what you gon do?" Who's a communist? Stalin? But on the other hand, my father—who was not . . . he was an uneducated kind of man, an interesting human—he'd have me write the notes for him; he sent me, I remember, to school with a note, "She do not have to pledge to the flag. When it means to her what it means to a white girl, then she may stand." So I'm thinking, yeah, but, people, I was twelve—you know what I mean. So when I took the note to the teacher, when they started pledging, I jumped up. I mean, it was terrible, it was so embarrassing because you know I didn't know what was going to happen from this, but I got that kind of message from him all the time, all the time.
SANCHEZ: That's a wonderful thing.
CLIFTON: And they were not educated people—that was the good thing, they were, yes thank goodness, for isn't that so, isn't it so, it is my great strength.
SANCHEZ: Good working-class people.
CLIFTON: I'm working class; I work every day.
SANCHEZ: I know but you know what I mean.
CLIFTON: I know the way they use that language.
SANCHEZ: I know the way they use the language—good working-class people but they could have some sense about them. [End Page 1058]
CLIFTON: The thing in Washington right now with the Anthrax business and the postal workers.
SANCHEZ: . . . working-class people.
CLIFTON: . . . and there was no interest in seeing about the postal workers.
SANCHEZ: That's right.
CLIFTON: The interest was in being sure about the senators and people in the Capitol building. These brothers are taking this mail around and two have died and now suddenly everyone is being administered to.
DAVIS: Sonia, talk about the battles so the young people realize the struggle we were in at San Francisco State. Could you talk about that and that being the origin of Black Studies at the non-historical black colleges so we can know what that was about?
SANCHEZ: You know, Malcolm had died, was killed . . . and Baraka started the Black Arts Repertory Theater. But there were dissenting voices at the BRT. We were the women who were organizing and writing proposals to make sure the projects took place and we were harassed by two of the people from downtown. They came upstairs with guns and said, "You bourgie bitches"—you know what I mean—"You bourgie bitches, come downstairs. We'll teach you about revolution." And we went down, and I'm looking at these people with guns, and I said to myself, "Uh huh, what am I doing here?" And for three hours they harangued us about what America was about and I'm listening and finally I said, "Can we go?" And we went upstairs and packed up my books and left. But we came back the next week and ended up there and it happened again. And they brought us down, and it was always with a gun, and I said to Barbara Hamilton—I can't remember the other sister with whom we were doing all this work in there—I said, "We need to meet outside this building." So we started meeting in these little mini parks to do this work. It was okay for awhile but then chaos . . . Larry Neal was shot, you know, and complete chaos happened there. Baraka went back to Newark, and I just got outta Dodge and went to see a dear friend in California. And I said, "I'm gonna go to Mexico." And there was a plane strike and planes couldn't fly, so I took a train into Mexico City, which was amazing, like traveling over the pampas. The train kept going around and around until we got to the top. And I was walking down El Paseo de la Reforma, and someone called down from a bus and said, "Hey Sonia Sanchez!" and I kept going and said, "Even in Mexico, you know . . . " [laughter]
And I kept walking, you know, and they came running and said, "We've been sending you letters, letters about helping us begin Black Studies." And I said, "Come on." I was hurting so from Malcolm's death, hurting so from the destruction of the Black Arts Repertory Theater. I turned and said, in my New York way, I said, "You call anything black today, it's gonna get destroyed just like that," and kept on walking. And they said "Come on, hang out with us," and I hung out with them. I refused to [End Page 1059] go [to California] until they came out to New York City. We talked about it, and I said to my father, "I'm gonna go to San Francisco." My father said, "Girl, you don't want to go to San Francisco." I said, "You know, you're right, you're probably right because," I said, "can you imagine making a third-rate movie actor governor of a state?" And Reagan was governor at that time. We went out there and helped to begin this thing called Black Studies. My supervisor from the English Department was a woman by the name of Kay Boyle who was a fantastically political woman, a fine writer, an amazing feminist who had been a writer with Hemingway in Paris. She was chairing the department at the time and that's what we did—we started this thing called Black Studies. And I taught a creative writing class where people wrote about themselves. Can you imagine? And students were told for the first time, "You can write about a black experience: it is not negative, it will not limit you. You will not be limited as such." And they did, and it was just amazing what happened at that particular time and the history classes and sociology classes and all the things that happened out there. It was an amazing time—until a man by the name of Haya Kawa.
Haya Kawa came, and Haya Kawa appealed to the Japanese-American community. He said, "I want you to support me and come out against these radicals here at San Francisco State." And one of the people, a representative from the Japanese community, said, "Oh, we didn't know that Mr. Haya Kawa related to being identified as Japanese American . . ." It was an amazing moment for everybody at State; we just rolled on the floor with laughter. But he was calling on that community to help him with these so-called radicals. What was amazing was that for the first time in an English department you were teaching the Langston Hugheses of America. You were teaching by going all the way back, teaching Langston Hughes, Phillis Wheatley, Marcus Garvey, Martin Delaney, and the Harlem Renaissance writers—isn't it amazing? I had to pull everything out. And I'll forever give thanks to a woman, Jean Hutson, who was curator at the Schomburg Library. She supplied me with all the information I needed to teach that Black literature class at San Francisco State University. Because of her I could teach DuBois's Souls of Black Folk and Jean Toomer's Cane.
We rolled out selections from DuBois's coming of John from Souls of Black Folk cause we didn't have the books and then they finally brought the books out. Why? Because there was a market for it. This is America, don't forget, and that same year they brought out Jean Toomer's Cane because we had just xeroxed part of Cane, and I took the whole class into the library and there was Cane there and I took that book. I would not do it again but I . . . [laughter] I said, "Let them buy another book—whatever."
DAVIS: Lucille, you worked at the Department of Education, right? Were there similar struggles that you went through in terms of curriculum or literature at the time?
CLIFTON: We dealt with children's books at the Department of Education, and we went to schools in three states. This is really a long time ago, and I had to find books that had characters in them that looked like my children, which is why I started writing children's books. Because I wanted to have my children be able to relate to [End Page 1060] someone like that. American children's literature ought to mirror American children. Now that seems to me quite obvious; however, it didn't seem at that time particularly. I borrowed something from Rudine Sims who said that all children—and I think that all adults as well—need mirrors and windows. Mirrors in which they can see themselves, windows through which they can see the world.
And everybody's children are disadvantaged by not having that. There are some children in our culture who have only seen mirrors—they are disadvantaged. There are some children in our culture who have only seen windows—they are disadvantaged. So it's one of the things I like to do—to provide balance, to provide windows and mirrors—if possible for my own children. I have six children. When they were little, they had me; but what did their schoolmates have, you know? And even now, I teach a class called Unpopular American History. [laughter] I taught it because at Duke I was asking, one time, if people had ever heard—now Duke is, right, big time—
SANCHEZ: Supposedly.
CLIFTON: Yeah, right. I was teaching a class, and people had never heard of Paul Robeson. Well, I thought, "Okay, he's dead, I suppose." But when they said they had never heard of Julian Bond and he's over in DC and . . .
SANCHEZ: . . . alive and still kicking . . .
CLIFTON: I said, "We can't have that." So at St Mary's I'm very fortunate. They let me teach whatever I want to, but the students don't get credit for the class. Isn't that interesting? The history people don't like it, so we talk about it . . .
SANCHEZ: But you get credit for dancing, taking a course in dancing—in spitting, probably, too.
CLIFTON: You don't get credit for learning about the Trail of Tears; they don't know about My Lai; they don't know about the Salem Witch Trials, which was an offense against women and humanness—the youngest child imprisoned in Salem was? Most people guess 12—she was 4, some authorities say 5.
AUDIENCE: Richard Wright, I haven't heard that name used.
SANCHEZ: Well you will, have patience.
CLIFTON: We wasn't finished!
SANCHEZ: You've got to have patience; we're not finished, are you? Just hold tight.
CLIFTON: That's why we're talking about the class, because in that class I do teach about the things that people don't know about. I have a friend who was a Tuskegee [End Page 1061] Airman, who was a general. He was court-martialled but he got back his brass or whatever that is they call that, when he was in camp one day and the officers' quarters were segregated. There were the officers' quarters and then he would go around in the back where it was like the officers' room for the African-American officers. And the African-American soldiers were not allowed in the movie house. He was riding by that one day and saw them marching in German prisoners of war to the movie house. And he went off—I mean he went off, and I try to teach about that. And I do it because I don't want anybody to be able to say, "Nobody ever told me." I don't want any of them to ever say, "I never heard of that." Now what they do with it is on them but they will have heard that. They would have heard the story, the whole story, because it is important. You only love something that you know wholly, including one's self, including one's self.
SANCHEZ: And he should've gone off. You know, I think that one of the things when we first started to write—I mean, people always ask me, "Why did you write such angry stuff?" I said, "Because I looked up after I was an educated woman and found out I had not been taught my history."
I was in the Schomburg: I went off, I went off, I started to cry—that's why I love Miss Jean Hutson to this day. I just—you know how you get out of school? I went to Hunter College and waited to get a job teaching in the system here. I answered an ad in the New York Times. You know how they have the ad—a thing about someone to write for the company. Write XYZ 465 New York Times. I did and they sent a telegram on a Saturday: "report to work on Monday." I went around the house saying to my father, "See, see, see, you can get a job writing. See, see, see, you can get a job writing." And my father looked at me and said, "Uh huh." The interesting thing was that he was not excited at all. He said, "uh huh," and I said, "see see see," all Saturday and Sunday.
I got ready to go to work on that Monday. I had a blue suit on, a blue hat on, blue shoes, white gloves, and a blue purse.
CLIFTON: Gloves?
SANCHEZ: Oh yes, gloves, yes, and I didn't show up at CP time. They said, "Show up at nine." I was there at eight thirty, before anyone. The receptionist came in at a quarter to nine, opened the door, and I showed her the telegram and she looked at it, and she said, "Yes."
And she got up, but there must have been another entrance there, because other people had come in. They didn't come in the front; they came in side doors or whatever, etc. So about ten minutes to, someone came out and looked and went back . . . a male. In about another two minutes, someone came and looked (again) and went back. A male. And then about five minutes to nine, this guy came out and said, "I'm so sorry the job is taken." And I said, "What do you mean?" I said, "No, I have my telegram there." And he said, "You know, the job is taken." I said, "Oh, I got it." I stood up. I said, "This is discrimination." He just stared at me coldly—coldly, no emotion at all. I said, "I'm going to report you to the Urban League." I laugh about that now, and he said, "uh huh," you know, like "Yeah, you do that." [End Page 1062]
I went out of there. I took the hat off, you know. I was so mad. I got on the train. I didn't get off at 96th Street where I would have to stay on the number one to go uptown. I ended up at 135th Street and 7th Avenue. I woke up out of this real daze and started walking across 135th Street, and there was this thing that said Schomburg on the side—the old Schomburg—and I was hot, I was mad, I was everything. I said to the guy who was standing outside, "What kind of library is this?" I said, "I just got out of Hunter, I've never seen this library." He said, "Go inside and ask." And the old Schomburg had a long table and the glass door, you know, where Miss Hutson stayed, and I went and knocked on the glass door. I said, "Hi." She said, "Hello." She used to tell this story to my students. I brought my students every semester to the Schomburg for study, and she used to tell this with this very sly smile on her face. And I said, "What kind of library is this? She said, "This is the Schomburg, dear." I said, "What kind of library is this?" She said, "We have books only by and about Black folks." And I said, with my sly self, "There must not be very many books in here." [laughter] And she said, "Dear, why don't you sit down," and she eased me in and she said, "Just a minute," and she brought me three books: Up from Slavery, Souls of Black Folk, and Their Eyes were Watching God, and put them right there. For some reason Their Eyes Were Watching God was the top book, and I start reading. I had trouble initially in terms of the language—you know, the Black English. After I was about a third of the way in, I eased out and there were all these old men scholars sitting there working. They haven't looked up yet, you know, just writing, and I eased out and knocked on the door, and I said, "How could I have been an educated woman and not read this?" and I started to cry. And she said, "That's all right, dear. Go back and just read." I eased in and sat there and started reading some more, and I started to cry and I eased out and knocked on the door. I said, "Well, how can they say we're educated if we don't read this?" And she said, "Yes, dear. Now go back and sit down and read." I eased back. One of them said, "Miss Hutson, would you tell this young woman either she sits still or she has to leave."
And I sat still because I was supposed to be going out to work every day. I didn't. I came to the Schomburg every day. I sat still for two weeks just going in, just reading. Then Miss Hutson did a wonderful thing. She gave me the name of Mr. Michaux. She said, "Go. You need to get some books of your own." She sent me to Mr. Michaux, who had his store diagonally across from the Hotel Teresa. For those who don't know the Hotel Teresa is there at 125th Street, right where the old Chock Full Of Nuts used to be—something else is there now, God knows what. I went to Mr. Michaux. "I don't have any money; I don't have a job yet. I'm supposed to be looking for a job." He gave me books. He said, "Here, you'll give it back."
And then she sent me to—what's the Caribbean bookstore?—Richard Moore. Remember how small it was? You had to go in sideways. And he said, "Girl, have you read . . . ?"—and he did this litany of Caribbean writers I hadn't read, and I didn't know who they were, didn't know they existed. And he pulled that little roller up and went up there and started pulling books. I said, "I don't have any money." He said, "That's all right, you'll give it back."
Miss Hutson did that; therefore, it wasn't by chance that when they started Black Studies, they said, "Who can teach black literature, who knows that?" "Sanchez, she's [End Page 1063] always talking about those books, those black books." That's how I got to San Francisco State because I was always saying "You should read this; you should read that; you should read that." And that's the strange kind of herstory that we have.
[Applause]
DAVIS: Do you want to talk about some of the mirrors in your life that sort of led you onto the road of poetry?
CLIFTON: My life has been so very different because I—everybody knows I didn't graduate from college—I went to Howard. I got a scholarship from Howard in the 1950s. I went there for a year. Howard in the 1950s was a most interesting place. I had never been away from my father's house, my mother's house. I'd never spent the night anywhere, and we got to DC in the 1950s—you know they had the dome over the station. I first of all, of course, thought this was not outside. I thought it was a building, maybe Howard, and I was there with a couple of friends of mine from Buffalo. They used to have sophomores and juniors come and greet the freshmen at the train, and I remember I had a little friend. I can't remember her name now, and I remember one of the sophomore gentlemen came and said to her (she was awfully cute), "Oh we're so [glad]—you're gonna love it here." And he looked at me and said, "You must be her mother." And I remember thinking to myself—I was still me, right—"As soon as I eat, I'm going home." [laughter] I swear, I have been myself for about 60-something years, but the things that I did learn were that—when I was very young, I've said many times, I learned to distrust authority quite a lot because I learned it a long time ago, I learned in those early years.
I was born in a little town that had very few African-American people, just our family really, and it was mostly Polish. And so I learned to understand Polish and to speak it when I was child, but I knew that people talked about niggers and I didn't know what that was. But what I did know was [that] I wasn't one, and so that led me to believe that anything they said could be suspect because they were saying this and it wasn't true. Maybe these weren't telling the truth and when I discovered that people were not going to teach me, were only going to teach me what they thought I could learn or what they wished me to know, I grew into a nosy kind of curious person. So I wanted to learn about all the rest of it, too, and I still, today, don't know whether I can teach or not. But I've been teaching college 31 years, and I do know I can learn. And I vowed then I was gonna learn a lot about everything I could. So I went to the library and in Buffalo [with] Ishmael Reed—I've known Ishmael. Ishmael and I. I'm not gon tell that story.
SANCHEZ: Don't, don't!
CLIFTON: But I've known Ishmael since we were about fourteen or fifteen, and Ishmael worked at the library, and he would liberate a book from time to time. [laughter] [End Page 1064]
SANCHEZ: Tsk tsk tsk . . .
CLIFTON: And anyway he used to steer me and some others toward books. And I would find one book, and it would mention something or someone, and I would go find another. I was always a learner and a reader in my life, and my father—I don't think he would call himself a Garveyite but he was a person who had very definite opinions about things, and he would voice them.
My father used to always tell me that I could do anything in the world I wanted to because I was from Dahomey women. I went for that, you know, I believed it. I was a Dahomey woman and so I could just be that and it was a good thing. When I went to Howard at that time in the 1950s—I'm sure it's all different now—but in the 1950s I was not light enough, you know, excepting that I was from New York State and you see they didn't know New York City was nowhere near Buffalo. And so they thought I was acceptable because I was from New York and I didn't even mention upstate on the border.
I was there at a wonderful time because my classmates were . . . do you know Joe Walker, who wrote the River Niger? Joe was my first crush. Oh I thought he was . . . girl!
SANCHEZ: Ooh fine . . .
CLIFTON: I thought he was so smart and Roberta Flack, she was there. Sterling Brown was my teacher. James Lavelle was my teacher. A lot of really remarkable . . .
DAVIS: Toni Morrison was there, too.
CLIFTON: Yeah, Toni. I've known Toni since I was that age—she was there. So many people, so many people who I didn't even realize. I was in the first production of James Baldwin's "The Amen Corner" which was premiered there, and I was in Sterling A. Brown's writing class. Now, here's this big kid from Buffalo who'd never been—I had on jeans all the time, not because I was that casual but I just had some jeans. We were poor people, we was po', you know, and they thought I was so exotic and I had on jeans. Sterling Brown had a group of writers who met and, now, how he let me be a part of that, I have no clue. But it was Sterling Brown, Owen Dodson, James Baldwin (when he was there), Joe Walker, and me. And I then didn't appreciate it, of course, but later I did; and I have no idea why I was—why he allowed me to be in his presence. That's where I first heard Billie Holiday.
SANCHEZ: That record collection he had, he had an amazing record collection.
CLIFTON: It opened me to a lot of possibilities. And then when I was published—I had no idea you could be published and look like me—I never sent things out. I still rarely do but I did not send that poem to the New Yorker. I want you to know that. I've talked about sending stuff to the New Yorker a lot. But they asked me for the poem. I [End Page 1065] had been writing, I had been writing poems with serious intent since I was a girl. I was twelve, eleven. I saw Robert Hayden's name in a book, and I thought Robert Hayden, and I thought, "He's a colored man." And so I sent him some poems (and, oh, Baraka was there at Howard too when I was there and A.B. Spellman—I've known them 40-something years) and Hayden took them to Carolyn Kiser, who was at that time head of the National Endowment for the Arts literature program.
Carolyn took them to the YMHA 92nd street Y, and I won the Discovery Award in that year. I had never heard of the Discovery Award, plus I didn't believe there was a YMHA. Cause I know the YMCA—I mean I'm not a fool, right? At that time I was 30-something years old. I had six children, the oldest was seven, and I had never imagined such a thing. But I had taken great care in my work.
Now I must say this to you. I must say this. People, I think, sometimes are surprised that Sonia and I are such good friends because we don't write alike. Particularly when I was first writing, African-American writers didn't particularly think . . . didn't validate what I did because it did not seem to be political, forgetting what Gwendolyn Brooks said—that when she walked out of her door, it was a political decision.
SANCHEZ: That's right, that's right.
CLIFTON: That's true, but that's all changed.
SANCHEZ: But that's how you get back to the point of how people become friends. It was because in this strange thing that we have out here in this literary world, people will identify you as such. I mean, they put tags on you very easily and there was a tag on her and there was a tag on me. And because we were tagged, I used to always try to contact the people who were tagged—like "Let us hang together" because it means simply, people are seeing something in us that they don't like, that they don't appreciate in a very real sense, and I think that what's important—we looked up at each other and you don't have to. You recognize what I do. I recognize what you do. You recognize what people do—the intent and the content, you know, and the love.
The thing about Lucille's work that you constantly see is always, the subtext is always love. The subtext is always love and the subtext is also, "Let me do this well, let me give you the best product I can possibly give you." And that's always been there. That's always been present.
You know, what we've tried to do on this earth, I think, in part, is to say simply, "If you can possibly read other political poets and say they do it well, then we too will do it." Every poem is political—it either maintains the status quo or it talks about change, period—okay?
DAVIS: Bottom line.
SANCHEZ: Always this idea that it's political because you mention a couple of words—that's pure nonsense. But the point is that one of the things that you see, that you saw in Lucille from following her work, is that we taught. [End Page 1066]
We brought all this work into the classroom—every time someone did a book, we brought it into the classroom so all our students had to read these people, period. Here they were, not being done in the English department or in what they called American literature. I mean, the thing that's so parochial about America is that it's still called the English department—isn't that wild? Think about that! The English department, right?
I started to teach American literature because nobody wanted to teach American literature. Everybody wanted to teach English literature: you give me Shakespeare, give me Blake, you know, and they always were talking about the Irish writers—called them English. Cause a whole lot of English writers weren't writing, so they took over the Irish writers and said, "They're English also." So we were left with African-American writers and American writers also, their work saying, "Look at these people"—and that's what we did. Finally because we introduced into that English department the whole idea of saying, "You've got to deal not only with African-Americans, you've got to deal also with Native Americans, you gotta deal with Chicanos."
I had in my course at San Francisco State two Japanese-American young women and we had come across the thing that said report to the location, the relocation, the concentration camps, internment. I brought in a picture of it and said, "Do you know anything about this?" and they got pissed. They said, "Sonia, I don't know anything about that." I mean, really, like "How dare you!" I said, "Well, go home and ask your parents." They came back in on Tuesday with tears in their eyes. Their parents had told them a story of silence—see what this country has been about?
The great thing about the poets, I love people who say they write poetry. Don't you ever see me stop you, whenever you say it. I look you straight in the eye and say, "Do you really? No, do you really love this thing called poetry? Are you willing to do the work? Are you ready to study? Are you ready when you come study with me?" As they come into the class, I make them do form. They say, "Why are we doing form? You're too hip to do form." I say, "No I'm not." I studied with a woman by the name of Louise Bogan at NYU and we all came in free versers. You know what I mean?
CLIFTON: Cool and modern.
SANCHEZ: Cool and modern words. On so many pieces of paper. She would look at it, you know, in her aristocratic voice and say, "Sonia, do you know why you did the following?" You know, I didn't know why. I just did it. Why should I know?
But she made us study form, she made us understand that all free verse has form, she made us bring it in, bring it in, bring it in. So as we struggled through blank verse and villanelles, you know, and ballads and blues, as we struggled through that course, I chose the Haiku finally as mine. Finally it was the thing I wanted to do because it just seemed to me that if you're all over the page, that haiku brings you right home. Three lines, you know, make you deal with some very real things on this earth. But I guess what I'm saying is at some particular point, I look people in the eye, these young people, and I say "Are you willing to study? Are you willing to learn this craft called poetry? And above all are you willing to love the language?" [End Page 1067]
CLIFTON: Because what happens, I think, is that people don't want to write poems as much as they want to be a poet.
SANCHEZ: Yeah, there's a difference.
CLIFTON: I want to be a poet; I don't know what's so cool about it.
SANCHEZ: Being a poet, being on stage . . .
CLIFTON: Oh . . .
SANCHEZ: Being on stage, that's what it is.
CLIFTON: Be a poet, big deal. I still have to do the dishes and everything else.
SANCHEZ: You do. One of the young men—he came from, I think, some place in the South—when I was living up in the Bronx came for the weekend for an interview. And he came in and my twins were little, little; and I had just fed them and I was cleaning up. I ran the bath water because that was the one time I had a chance for peace. I just threw 'em both in the bathtub and it just flooded, you know, they would flood the whole bathroom. I told the guy "I gotta clean this up." He said to me, "But you live in such an ordinary way, Sonia." I said, "Yeah I'm an ordinary woman." [laughter] I said, "There's no help here except my aunt who helps me with the children when I'm teaching during the week. She goes home weekends. I'm with the children, I'm feeding them on weekends." You know what I mean—that was real.
CLIFTON: Nobody would watch my kids—I had four in diapers at once. My sister said to me, "I love you and I love the children. I will not watch four in diapers at once."
SANCHEZ: That's hard, four in diapers is hard.
CLIFTON: We didn't have a washing machine and I said many times—this was a while back, of course—but I'm one of the few poets who fusses about this.
SANCHEZ: Yes, we fuss about that a lot. Say it.
CLIFTON: I've been evicted twice, you know—a long time ago, so if you've been evicted once, I am not at all impressed. [laughter] I haven't been evicted anymore though, so everything's cool.
SANCHEZ: A young sister just called me from Boston. She just had a baby, and she was a writer and she was interviewing me over the telephone. She said, "Well, how did you do it, how did you do it?" I said, "How did I do what?" She said, "How did [End Page 1068] you stay alive and keep writing with babies?" I said, "You do it." I said, "If you ask me how I did it, I can't tell you. You know," I said "but there was many a night after I put everybody to bed, I went crazy during those midnight hours from 12:30 till about 5:30. I was crazy and I walked in my craziness." What is today? It's not day, it's night, oh it's night ho ho ho ho. Should I read a book, why should I read a book? Should I write a book, why should I write a book? Who's gonna read the book, who's gonna care if I write the book? But at 5:30, like clock work, like clock work, cause the kids were gonna get up—snap back to sanity. I could not afford to go insane.
CLIFTON: Indeed.
SANCHEZ: And that's the point that she's saying, and so I would put the children down. I'd run out to the corner, you know, some of you, to the Laundromat to throw my children's clothes in to be washed and then I ran back to make sure they were okay. And I timed it, and I ran back to put them in the dryer, then I ran back to try and make sure they were okay. Then I ran back to get them out of the dryer . . .
CLIFTON: I had a friend one time when I was in Buffalo, and her husband came running to the house, and said, "Lucille, you gotta come and see about her, cause she's gone catatonic." Now they had two children, see. He said, "Come and would you take the children?" I've got six, right! "Come and take the children." And I went over to his house, and she's laying up there on the floor, you know, and I said, "Girl, you have to get up!"
SANCHEZ: That's right.
CLIFTON: "You have to uncatatonic. [audience laughter] I'm not catatonic and I've got much more reason than you do to be miserable and I'm not taking your children." So she just sorta shook herself, got on up, and went on with her life.
SANCHEZ: Didn't have the leisure.
CLIFTON: We didn't have time for that.
SANCHEZ: You didn't have the leisure to go crazy permanently, you know. You know you could do it, you know you know it—don't be looking at me. You women know what I'm talking about, but you know I know and you know we know and we know what happens, you know. Mmmh mmmh, yeah.
DAVIS: Alright. [audience laughter]
SANCHEZ: But you don't stop laughter. She's startin', she's startin', but you don't have any insanity in the poetry. Think on that. Think on that. [End Page 1069]
CLIFTON: The poetry sustains.
SANCHEZ: The poetry says, "I'm not gon take none of this insane shit—you know what I mean—you know what I mean." Excuse my French. [laughter]
SANCHEZ: "You know if you're gonna come here and do something, you gonna come with some kind of sense of the world, girl. Get your head together before you start writing me." And you say, "Yes, I will. Yes, I will." And you do.
CLIFTON: Because you serve the poems.
SANCHEZ: That's right.
CLIFTON: I'm here to try and help the poem become what it seems to want to be. This is what I do. This is what I am. I can no more not write the poem . . . Now publishing is something else!
SANCHEZ: Yes, it is.
CLIFTON: I had been writing for thirty years before I was published, but that's not the part that matters. What matters [is that] the poem wants to come and I'm here to receive it, try to be faithful to it and remain open to the possibility—and it shows up.
SANCHEZ: And you young writers understand that. That you open yourself up to the universe, you open yourself up to what it is you see. What I'm saying is don't think about "I want to be on a stage someplace" but think about "I want to receive from the universe these words that will not only sustain me but will sustain other people."
Just think what your books do or your writing. Just think what they do for other people. There are people who will write you and say you have no idea how you saved me during my midnight hours. That is something. That's better than anyone writing any review about your book; the idea is those things that come in. I did a book called Wounded In The House Of A Friend, and I got this letter—I was in my office at Temple—and this letter came from this young brother who said, "I have read you"—it came from the state of Washington—"forever since I was a little boy." I'm always amazed by that when people tell you. I start looking "aw yeah right, that's a long time there, right." He continued, "I started and then stopped reading that book and I got upset, because you too are now joining that company of people who are damning men." It was written in blue (ink) and then there was a date there, let's say 9/14 and then there was a date 10/14 and it was written in another ink. And he said, "I went into the kitchen"—he's a grad student—"I went into the kitchen to tell my wife that I was going to go on campus and my wife was insane, collapsed. She was insane in the kitchen, talking to herself." And he said, "I know why she was insane, because I was having an affair on that campus and it was an unspoken thing between us and that was why she was going insane." He said, "I went back and read that prose poem." He said, [End Page 1070] "I want to thank you, Professor Sanchez. I will never ever again make my wife go through that which I put her through." Now that's simple on many levels but it's profound. I went to a place called Washington in that great bookstore—you know that great bookstore in Washington in Seattle . . .
AUDIENCE: Elliott Bay.
SANCHEZ: Elliott Bay, oh I could live [there] for days, you know what I mean. Go there for Elliott Bay—it's an amazing bookstore and there was this line, I was autographing books and this person was at the end and I looked up and I said, "You're the one who wrote me that letter," and he said, "Yes," and I got up and I hugged him.
The point, my poetry and the poets that I know who wrote well, is to keep us all human. And that is what we finally have got to understand. That we've got to make you turn around when you're fearful and say, "Don't be afraid. What are you afraid of? What are you afraid of? And why do people want you to be afraid?" You know. Why do people want you to be afraid? And if you can say, "I'm not afraid." We are a nation of people who will not succumb to this fear at all, then that's what we do as poets—make you understand what it is finally to be human and to walk upright.
CLIFTON: The poem, I think, the thing that poetry can do, is speak for those who have not yet found their ability to speak.
SANCHEZ: That's right.
CLIFTON: And to say you are not alone.
SANCHEZ: That's right.
CLIFTON: You are not alone and if that's all it does—that's enough, that's sufficient.
SANCHEZ: Oh yes, it is, yes it is. [clapping]
DAVIS: What we're going to do now is take a few questions. We're going to take a few questions from the audience.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: What relationship does your work have to the theme of regret?
CLIFTON: I am a whole human. I don't think of that as a theme, first of all, but if it is, I'm a whole human. It is human to be angry, it is human to be glad, it is human to be afraid—all of that. I wished to express in all of my humanness. I wish to see myself wholly and to be seen wholly—I wish to see others wholly and to have them see me wholly. What I regret is that I have not been more human—perhaps that's what I regret. But if I do, it is all going to make me what I am. And whatever that is that I am, [End Page 1071] I try very hard to honor it and to respect it and to know it. What I tell audiences is that it is quite all right. It's interesting (when I say) "I'm just like you" and for people who think of themselves as liberal, that's easy: "I'm just like you are." But it is a little more difficult for them to understand that they are just like me and I know that's true too. I know that's a little more difficult but it's not impossible. We do the difficult every day. I do difficult stuff all the time. Getting up.
AUDIENCE: Regarding school?
CLIFTON: School is not the only place you can study. Sonia's very educated . . .
SANCHEZ: Shhhhh. [laughter] But if you want that degree, get it. Don't let it cloud what you want to do. And then once you get it, put it aside and keep on going. But you can study everything.
CLIFTON: Yeah, learn.
AUDIENCE QUESTON: But as a writer, I have to [go to] the English Department. I don't belong in the English Department, but yet I'm stumped as to where I'm supposed to go. I don't know where to go.
CLIFTON: Go to the books, read them, go to the library. I've never taken creative writing classes. I've never taken them but that doesn't mean I don't know anything about it. There's a lot of stuff I don't have to deal with because I don't have to unlearn it, you know, which is a great blessing. But learn. Learn. Learn. If you wait for people to tell you what they know, that's all you'll know.
DAVIS: There's a question back there. Right there in the front with the black shirt.
AUDIENCE QUESTION: I just wanted to ask you. I'll keep it brief but I just wanted to ask you. Dr. Sanchez, I don't know if you'll remember me, but back at the University of Chicago about 2 years ago we were doing a reading for a group and your plane was late, it was horrible. I don't know, but we had this auditorium full of people and they were all like, "Where is Mama Sanchez?" We have food waiting, we started eating before she got there. Trying to keep the crowd quiet and she finally came in. And I was organizing, I didn't know that you had come in.
And you were sitting in the front and you were listening to other poets but you were kind of nodding, nodding off. I know you had had a hell of a time at the airport. And they turned the lights out on you and you were so tired.
I just want to let everyone know how real this woman is. She went ahead and took us out to dinner after we got through—we didn't get finished until about 11:30, and she just wanted to go back to the hotel. And we said, "Well, we were going to take you out to dinner," and she said, "Well, I'll go out to dinner." We went to Leona's in Hyde Park, and she was kind of nodding off as she was talking then and telling us about history. [End Page 1072]
You know that changed me as a writer because I too wanted to be that writer, I wanted to be on stage, I wanted people to read my books, and professors to talk highly about me. But I thought about that moment, us sitting at Leona's and eventually after they kicked us out. I just thought about you sitting with us, 6 young black girls and talking to us and teaching us. I was like, you know, this is what it's all about. I just want to thank you for that evening. We took you to your hotel and we wrote you a letter thanking you, but I just wanted to thank you personally.
SANCHEZ: Thank you. [clapping]
AUDIENCE QUESTION: We spoke earlier about Cave Canem. I just want to take a moment to acknowledge your old heads from the Sonia Sanchez workshop on Countee Cullen . . .
SANCHEZ: Three years.
AUDIENCE: I'm gonna ask the Sonia Sanchez workshop folk who are here to raise your hands. Sonia has been doing it for a very long time, and there's a lot of us who can point back to where we started to learn the craft and thank her. I don't know if you remember, Sonia. National Black Theater on Sunday afternoon. Close your eyes and something was passed around in each of our hands and we were asked to think about what it was and what the image was. It was a grape and we were asked to create the image off of the feel of that grape and that was one of the early exercises that Sonia had in her bag of teaching tricks, so I just wanted to take this opportunity to acknowledge and thank you because an awful lot of where my work is now today is the result of you.
SANCHEZ: Thank you.
CLIFTON: Testify, I love this.
DAVIS: We're going to take just one more question and then that will be it for the evening. There will be a signing again after this, and you'll have an opportunity to buy books if you'd like.
SANCHEZ: Before we take the last question, Lucille and I thank you for coming out on a Wednesday night. [clapping]
CLIFTON: Thank you.
SANCHEZ: Talking about poetry—ooh.
CLIFTON: That's right. [End Page 1073]
AUDIENCE QUESTION: The war and everything that's going on. What do you think now should be the issue? Should we be more focused? Would this have happened if George Bush hadn't been elected in the first place? There seem to be so many questions.
SANCHEZ: Me? You just continue to do your work and you don't let what I call "that red blue and white patriotism"—you know, the idea that you should put a flag in your hand every time you move even when you go to the bathroom.
I'm not being disrespectful. I'm saying that is not what you are about. As someone said to me, "Do you have a flag in front of your house?" I said, "I understand the flag quite well you know, and I don't have to have that flag in front of my house at all." Do you understand what I'm saying? And the point is that for a moment we're all stunned and we stop.
Because you stop and you have to say, "Well okay, let me reconnoiter here. Let me look and see how I go." You see and you don't come out stupidly. You don't come out making comments that will offend people. People have had losses, okay, you don't offend people's losses. You don't offend the whole point of people mourning—what's that about? But you also don't let a country offend you and make you believe that you're stupid. You know, when people begin to say, "Now I will take away your liberties" because we're at war, and the point of all of us should be now on this earth, peace. We've got to begin to teach this thing called peace finally and it's an opportune time to do it. [clapping]
CLIFTON: Now do you see what I'm saying?
SANCHEZ: Sure.
CLIFTON: One of the things I believe very strongly is that cultures and civilizations are lost in groups, but they are saved one on one and so doing your own work is a good thing. You know they are saved person to person—this is where Michael Jackson has it right. I looked at the man in the mirror. [laughter] I changed his ways. "If you want to make the world a better place, get a get a, what is it—Take a look at yourself and make a change." [laughter, clapping]
SANCHEZ: That was good.
CLIFTON: Yeah, that was good.
SANCHEZ: Thank you.
Eisa Davis, poet and playwright, is a graduate of Actors Studio and Harvard University. An affiliate artist at New York Theatre Workshop, she has received fellowships from Van Lier Foundation/New Dramatists, the Mellon Foundation, and the McDowell Colony.
