In The Name of Sanchez: Women Who Inspire.

The first time I read Sonia Sanchez my soul combusted. I must have been about seven. I was sitting on the floor in my room, in the middle of my pile of books, and from the first sentence, I could feel her words kissing my face. It felt like I was coming home again but coming back to something I had never known before. Every single time I read her work, I feel it all over again. She has saved my life more than once.

As a child, she ingrained words into the fibers of my skin. Each crevice is a pocket of narratives told over and over in the sound of her voice. When we are young we experience stories like hers with tenderness. We have to have trust because we are innocent. How they are told is a fragile, sacred thing. This is how words became my soul’s communication.

I remember the day my mama came home with a copy of Shake Loose My Skin. When I opened it, her name was signed at the bottom. There was a note from Sonia to me. What was written on that note is only for she and I to know, but I didn't leave the house without it for weeks. I read it over and over again until the pages were worn. She spoke about love and all its repercussions. She spoke about pain and all its glory. She spoke about blackness and all its forms.

She spoke about magic.

"Resist lying and gossiping and stealing and killing each other on every Saturday night corner.

Resist having a baby because you need something to love, young sister, love yourself.

Resist raping your sister, your wife, somebody’s grandmother.

Resist recolonizing your mind mind mind mind.”

The first time I heard her read live, I must have been sixteen. It was at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I felt so connected to the words themselves, almost pierced by the sound, commanding me to wait, to listen for more, for whatever next she might say to clarify the world.

When I was seventeen, I attended one of her workshops on writing haikus. I remember walking into the building and seeing her at the end of a long wooden table scratching words into a small pocket notebook, exactly how I imagined her to be. She had shoulder-length grey locks with small whiskers of hair poking out at all angles. There were sheets of paper, and a pencil carefully placed in front of every chair around her. It smelled like honey and hibiscus. There were twelve chairs set up in a circular form, so we could all face one another. I was motionless in this small room in a big Victorian house on Germantown Avenue with Sonia Sanchez at the head of the table smiling with a wide-mouthed grin. That's when she summoned us into her sanctuary. I had never witnessed anything so exquisite.

"Hello my sister" she said to me and shook my hand. Her skin was smooth with ripples of wrinkles. She held me in such tenderness, reminiscent of the way a mama delicately fosters her young.

We all sat down and were taken to an alternate universe, in a semi-circle, with the sun edging its way through the left side of the vast bay windows. We all knew the sun taunting our skin felt warmer that afternoon. It felt meaningful because Sonia was with us.

We shared, we stripped ourselves raw in the name of Sanchez, we surrendered, we soaked ourselves in the sacrednesses of each moment shared in that room. We all watched as she strung together words of wonder that could only be read as anthems, rituals, prayers, and symphonies of sentences no one would ever dare to recite without the smooth sensations she speaks with every sound.

We all knew without any words said, that our souls had been transformed in that big Victorian house on Germantown Avenue.