The Cultural confrontation in Sonia Sanchez’s Rap Poetry

Abstract

This paper studies the rap poetry of Sonia Sanchez as an example of the literature of protest which prevailed throughout the 1960s and „70s of the twentieth century, especially the poetry of the Black Arts Movement. During the 1960s a group of Black poets started to compose poems that can best be described as anti-white poems which aimed at rejecting the hegemonic white culture and its oppressions over the Blacks. They rejected the American culture in favour of a Black one that would formulate a Black consciousness which would be the touchstone of the cultural resistance and would, the poets wished, initiate a revolution against the white Americans‟ violence and unfair practices towards the African-Americans.
Sonia Sanchez was an active member of the Black Arts Movement which was established in the 1960s and called for a violent revolution against the white Americans, especially after the assassination of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King. This movement called for Black aesthetic which highlighted a literature that reflects and explores the Black culture and traditions and speaks to the Blacks‟ issues and concerns. Therefore, their poems were politically oriented as they addressed the lives and ambitions of the Black people and started using the Black speech in their poetry. Their poetry, then, is given a Black identity which is considered as the essence of the Black Aesthetic Movement