SOURCE: "The Poetry of Sonia Sanchez," in Black Women Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation, edited by Mari Evans, Anchor Press, 1984, pp. 433-48.

In the following essay, Williams analyzes the changes that have occurred in Sanchez's poetry from her first collection, Homecoming, to her I've Been a Woman, including a new sense of rootedness.

The title of Sonia Sanchez's first collection, Homecoming, marks with delicate irony the departure point of a journey whose direction and destination can now be considered. I've Been a Woman, her most recent book, invites such an appraisal, including as it does a retrospective of her earlier work as well as an articulation of a newly won sense of peace:

     shedding my years and
     earthbound now. midnite trees are
     more to my liking.

These lines contain an explicit reworking of images that dominate "Poem at Thirty," one of the most personal statements in Homecoming. That early...