Sankofa appears in African American poetry as a principle of recovery, remembrance, and cultural healing. Poets use it to revisit ancestral history, slavery, African heritage, family memory, and lost names, suggesting that future freedom depends on understanding and reclaiming what has been forgotten.

Sankofa, derived from West African thought, expresses the idea that meaningful progress requires recovering knowledge from the past. In African American poetry, it is especially useful for interpreting works that revisit slavery, ancestral identity, forgotten names, or suppressed histories in order to imagine future healing or liberation. Students should recognise Sankofa as both philosophical principle and interpretive tool linking remembrance with transformation.