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Nominated for the 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry Recommended Reading from Emerge An epic poem on kin estranged, the death of a brother from AIDS, and the possibility of reconciliation and love in the face of loss.

nominated For The 1998 National Book Critics Circle Award For Poetry

recommended Reading From Emerge

an Epic Poem On Kin Estranged, The Death Of A Brother From Aids, And The Possibility Of Reconciliation And Love In The Face Of Loss.

publishers Weekly

rich In Kin And Kindred Spirits, This Panegyrical Collection Displays Sanchez's Gift For Crafting Public Poetry Out Of Social Issues And Familial Relationships. Straightforwardly, Sanchez (wounded In The House Of A Friend) Documents Her Brother's Death From Aids, And The Family's Estrangement And Reconciliation. Calculated Tensions Are Expertly Enhanced In Rhyme Royal Stanzas Where Words And Linebreaks Virtually Tumble Across The Page. The Energy Generated By This Formal Compression Mirrors Her Brother's Struggle Against The Confines Of Society: And The Days Rummaging His Eyes/ And The Nights Flickering Through A Slit/ Of Narrow Bars. Hips. Thighs./ And His Thoughts Labeling Him Misfit/ As He Prowled, Pranced In The Starlit/ City.... As The Sequence Of Poems Progresses, Ancestral Voices Are Introduced And The Composition Gives Way To African Words And Rhythms: I Come, Doctor./ Mangi Nyo Captor. The Stanzas Compress And Collapse As The Brother's Health Deteriorates, Ending In Forceful Dialogues Between, For Example, Brother And Ancestor, Female. Sanchez Successfully Evokes Her Brother's Journey Toward Self-realization: Come Here African/ Come Here African/ I Am Coming/ I Am Coming. In The Volume's Four Sections, Sanchez Moves From Her Brother's Youth In The South, To His Life In New York, And To His Eventual Death. Building In Drama And Preacherly Cadences, This Work Is Fluid, Controlled And Dexterously Paced. (apr.)

Does Your House Have Lions? explores the life of Sonia Sanchez's brother - a vibrant young man who left the South for New York, immersed himself in the city's gay subculture, and became a victim of AIDS in the first years of the pandemic. Sanchez describes her brother's alienation from his family and his illness and death from AIDS with her characteristic tenderness. Told in the voices of sister, brother, father, mother, and ancestors, it is the story of kin estranged and then finally brought together by their shared history of loss, separation, and pain. This brave epic poem shatters silences surrounding gay sexuality in African-American families and imagines the possibility of reconciliation and love. It offers a meditation on the living meanings of journey, life, and death - an opportunity for all of us to find a way home. From the American Poetry Society's 2018 Wallace Stevens Award–winner, this is an epic poem on kin estranged, the death of a brother from AIDS, and the possibility of reconciliation and love in the face of loss.