SOURCE: "In Appreciation of Sonia Sanchez," in The Black Scholar, Vol. 10, Nos. 8 and 9, May-June, 1979, pp. 84-5.

In the following review, Salkey discusses the poems from Sanchez's I've Been a Woman and describes her poetry "as songs of difficult truth and harsh beauty."

The title of this new collection of poems by Sonia Sanchez reads as if it were the poet's answer to the question, "What have you been doing since the '60s?" And so it may be construed.

Even a cursory reading of the text would yield evidence enough that the poet has been quintessentially herself, all the way throughout the emblematic '60s into the even more sign-confusing and numbing '70s.

And incidentally, for … A Woman, in the title, the equivalent, "radically compassionate," is amply suggested in the poems.

Indeed, I've Been a Woman is a richly layered and lucid statement of radicalism and compassion...