As we move into the season of Lent in the Christian year 2021, the Katie Geneva Cannon Center for Womanist Leadership is excited to launch a new adult curriculum titled “’It’s A New Day’: A Lenten Journey with Sonia Sanchez,” developed by Reverend Lisa R. Janes.

This study guide story-links the life, poetry, and activism of Dr. Sonia Sanchez to the life and ministry of Jesus, beginning with his baptism at the Jordan River and culminating with his journey to the cross on Good Friday.

As a poet, playwright, author, professor, and mother, Dr. Sanchez is a warrior-woman of words. She pioneered in the halls of academia, during the turbulent 1960s and 1970s, the introduction of black literature, or what is known today as African American literature. In 1969, while teaching at the University of Pittsburgh, she was the first to create and teach a course based on the Black Woman and Literature in the United States.

Her poetry and unique lyricism of language, which ranges from prophetic, radical, and revolutionary to contemplative, has inspired many in the hip-hop and spoken word communities. As an evolutionary-revolutionary who is now 86 years strong, Dr. Sanchez has continued in her quest, as a co-founder of the Black Arts Movement and a participant in the Nation of Islam, the American Civil Rights Movement, and the Black Power Movement, to ask the relevant question for the 21st century, “What does it mean to be human?”

Through this Lenten journey study, you will discover that you must learn how to breathe and come to your senses as you battle the vicissitudes of life, for it is in the experience of our trauma and pain that we emerge as true warriors—paraphrasing the words of Sonia Sanchez—“badddDDD, badder than bad!”