"Poetry helps us see the world in ways we don’t ordinarily see it. Its job is not to just record what is obvious but also to show us the things that we would rather not see." -Carl Phillips
"...when your community is really suffering, often you really feel that you want to be that voice. When the pressure on the community is less then individuals can express themselves as individuals more." -Harryette Mullen
"I started writing in the south in the 1960s. There was a lot of upheaval and my parents were involved in civil rights marches and fights at the time. ...I remember thinking to myself, “How can I join in? How can I do my part?” -Nikky Finney
"To me, history is a mystery that needs to be cracked. There’s a lot of history that’s been passed down and said, “This event has been studied and this is the conclusion we came to.” I don’t believe in those things. I’m always looking to see if there’s an alternate conclusion."-Patricia Smith
"Community is important to black, to blue, to green, to white. It happens when there’s encouragement around it, and often encouragement takes the form of other people doing things." -Thomas Sayers Ellis
"The younger generation feels as though racism doesn’t exist anymore. They say they have never experienced it, but they have, they just don’t know it because they think, “That’s just how people are,” and no, that’s not how people are." -Bonita Lee Penn
"I’ve spent all this time with stuff bottled inside, ideas in my head. I had lots of stuff to get out, lots of words to get out, and I wanted to see how I would use those words." -Colleen McElroy
"Making education out of people’s reach is a form of censorship." -Sapphire
"The complexity is where the excitement is. It’s impossible for me to be clearly on one side, because the imagination wants to look over and see what’s on the other side." -Terrance Hayes
"There are certain ways in which we are being wounded that we shouldn’t forget. What happened to Louima – all the violence that happens to black men in this culture – is not something that should be forgotten." -Claudia Rankine
"If we think of black poets, there is a lot of pressure on them because the dominant culture is white. The historical perspective that belongs to that hegemonic whole tends to be what remains. As a result I think black poets struggle with the idea of how to locate a fringe history while at the same time creating a work of art." -Chris Abani
“I still don’t know what “post-racial” means. The amount of energy and denial it takes to try to make that idea true is simply mind-blowing. Don’t we wish…" -Cornelius Eady
“…you can’t say that American literature represents in an integrated way the diverse voices of the American people. There are still these separations that have to do with class and money and power and race and all those things." -Toi Dericotte
"I believe that writers—particularly African American writers and African diaspora writers—should be cultural historians. Or at least try to be, because you never can be, there’s so much to explore." -Angela Jackson
"When I walk in a room I don't have to speak about race, it's already there." -Yusef Komunyakaa
"The power to control what you think and what you say is the power to define you. Words are the weapons of the strong; swords are the weapons of the weak." -Nikki Giovanni
“If you do something that the powers don’t like, they make you invisible.” -Amiri Baraka
Carter G. Woodson, founder of what became Black History Month in 1976, wrote: “[Racial prejudice] is merely the logical result of tradition; [it is] the inevitable outcome of thorough instruction to the effect that the Negro has never contributed anything to the progress of mankind.”
Woodson spent most of his life collecting writings and artifacts to raise awareness about the impact African Americans have had on history. Likewise, in commemoration of Black History Month, Sampsonia Way recognizes the African-American authors, both previous and recent, who have contributed their transformative words to our pages.
Over the past few years, Sampsonia Way has interviewed Chris Abani, Amiri Baraka, Toi Derricotte, Thomas Sayers Ellis, Nikki Giovanni, Angela Jackson, and Yusef Komunyakaa, among many others.
