Depression

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1978

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Background

Historical Context: The Black Arts Movement

The Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s was a response to the sociopolitical landscape of the United States. These artists were keenly aware of the oppression African American people faced due to Jim Crow Laws and the history of slavery in the United States. Artists in the Black Arts Movement created work centered on the identities and experiences of African Americans as an act of political resistance. The plays, books, poems, music, dances, and other forms of art created as part of the movement were meant to inspire a sense of pride in Black people for their culture, and to foster community that celebrated their lives instead of oppressing them.

All of Sonia Sanchez’s poetry is politically inflected to a degree. She has described her cultural influence as “the existence of us as black folk in a place that did not speak well of us, a country that not only had enslaved us but afterward had ignored us—had segregated us and conspired to keep us from learning even the simplest things” (Sanchez, Sonia and Susan Kelly. “Discipline and Craft: An Interview with Sonia Sanchez.” African American Review. 2017). Sanchez is frequently named alongside Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, and Toni Morrison as a leading figure of the Black Arts Movement.

Literary Context: The Beat Generation

The Beat Generation or Beat Movement of the 1950s was a social and artistic movement responding to life in the United States after World War II. Members of this subculture, called beats or beatniks, rejected what they saw as an overly materialistic, soul-sucking modern society. They believed that only by going beyond the bounds of what the dominant culture considered respectable could a person discover deep truths and achieve true personal fulfillment.

Beats adopted a bohemian lifestyle: exploring new spiritual avenues (especially Eastern religions), going on a journey of personal discovery, and experimenting with drugs and sex. Jack Kerouac’s 1957 novel, On The Road is a prime example of the search for meaning. Beat writers rejected conventional literary forms as inauthentic. They tried to represent their consciousness as directly as possible in their work by innovating new forms and engaging in controversial, often taboo subjects. The long lines and run-on sentences of Allen Ginsberg’s poem "Howl" (1956) demonstrate this formal innovation.

The Beat Generation immediately precedes the Black Arts Movement. The beat fad began to fade by 1960, four years before Amiri Baraka—often called the father of the Black Arts Movement—wrote his first play. Like the Beat poets, Sonia Sanchez’s poetry is inspired by the free-flowing form of jazz music. She experiments with line length, line breaks, spacing, and the shape of her poems to amplify the musical quality. Poets in both the Black Arts Movement and the Beat Generation had a vested interest in challenging literary norms. The major divide between the Beats Generation and the Black Arts Movement is politics. While the beats were anti-establishment, they had no political agenda beyond their own individual interests. In contrast, the Black Arts Movement is primarily concerned with community and the African American experience.

Personal Context: Sonia Sanchez’s Activism

The personal and the political are one and the same in Sonia Sanchez’s poetry. Her politics arise from her personal experiences as an African American woman, so even her most personal poetry is politically inflected. In “Depression,” Sanchez honors the experience of being a depressed person by depicting this challenging subject in a public art form.

Sanchez’s politics have changed throughout her life. In the 1960s when she first became involved in the Civil Rights Movement, she was a member of the Congress for Racial Equality, or CORE. Sanchez supported CORE’s strategy of integration, which meant ending segregation and creating equal opportunities so that minority groups could become part of the legal and cultural majority. Sanchez met Malcom X at CORE, and in the late 1960s, she became interested in separatism, which advocated establishing communities and support systems for Black people, preserving their discrete identity as a minority. Sanchez was part of the Nation of Islam, a Black nationalist group, from 1972 to 1974. She later split with the group but has continued to be an outspoken advocate and activist for the African American community.