#phillis wheatley

She was called Phillis, because that was the name of the ship that brought her, and Wheatley, which was the name of the merchant who bought her. She was born in Senegal.

In Boston, the slave traders put her up for sale: “She's 7 years old! She will be a good mare!”

At thirteen, she was already writing poems in a language that was not her own. No one believed that she was the author. At the age of twenty, Phillis was questioned by a court of eighteen enlightened men in robes and wigs.

She had to recite passages from Virgil and Milton and some verses from the Bible, and she also had to vow that the poems she had composed were not copied. From a chair, she underwent her lengthy examination, until the court approved her: she was a woman, she was Black, she was enslaved, but she was a poet.

Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American writer to publish a book in the United States.

Phillis Wheatley (1753 – 1784) by Larry Johnson

Last week, as the final judge for this year's Loft McKnight Awards in creative writing, awards distributed in Minneapolis, Minnesota, I read through sixteen manuscripts of rather fine poetry.

These are the terms, the lexical items, that I encountered there:

Rock, moon, star, roses, chimney, Prague, elms, lilac, railroad tracks, lake, lilies, snow geese, crow, mountain, arrow feathers, ear of corn, marsh, sandstone, rabbit-bush, gulley, pumpkins, eagle, tundra, dwarf willow, dipper-bird, brown creek, lizards, sycamores, glacier, canteen, skate eggs, birch, spruce, pumphandle

Is anything about that listing odd? I didn't suppose so. These are the terms, the lexical items accurate to the specific white Minnesota daily life of those white poets.

And so I did not reject these poems, I did not despise them saying, "How is this possible? Sixteen different manuscripts of poetry written in 1985 and not one of them uses the terms of my own Black life! Not one of them writes about the police murder of Eleanor Bumpurs or the Bernard Goetz shooting of four Black boys or apartheid in South Africa, or unemployment, or famine in Ethiopia, or rape, or fire escapes, or cruise missiles in the New York harbor, or medicare, or alleyways, or napalm, or $4.00 an hour, and no time off for lunch.

I did not and I would not presume to impose my urgencies upon white poets writing in America. But the miracle of Black poetry in America, the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America, is that we have been rejected and we are frequently dismissed as “political” or “topical” or “sloganeering” and “crude” and ‘insignificant” because, like Phillis Wheatley, we have persisted for freedom. We will write against South Africa and we will seldom pen a poem about wild geese flying over Prague, or grizzlies at the rain barrel under the dwarf willow trees. We will write, published or not, however we may, like Phillis Wheatley, of the terror and the hungering and the quandaries of our African lives on this North American soil. And as long as we study white literature, as long as we assimilate the English language and its implicit English values, as long as we allude and defer to gods we “neither sought nor knew,” as long as we, Black poets in America, remain the children of slavery, as long as we do not come of age and attempt, then to speak the truth of our difficult maturity in an alien place, then we will be beloved, and sheltered, and published.

But not otherwise. And yet we persist.

And it was not natural. And she was the first.

This is the difficult miracle of Black poetry in America: that we persist, published or not, and loved or unloved: we persist.

And this is: “Something Like A Sonnet for Phillis Miracle Wheatley”: -

Girl from the realm of birds florid and fleet flying full feather in far or near weather Who fell to a dollar lust coffled like meat Captured by avarice and hate spit together Trembling asthmatic alone on the slave block built by a savagery travelling by carriage viewed like a species of flaw in the livestock A child without safety of mother or marriage Chosen by whimsy but born to surprise They taught you to read but you learned how to write Begging the universe into your eyes: They dressed you in light but you dreamed with the night. From Africa singing of justice and grace, Your early verse sweetens the fame of our Race.

And because we Black people in North America persist in an irony profound, Black poetry persists in this way:

Like the trees of winter and like the snow which has no power makes very little sound but comes and collects itself edible light on the black trees The tall black trees of winter lifting up a poetry of snow so that we may be astounded by the poems of Black trees inside a cold environment

in order: paul revere, george washington, phillis wheatley, benedict arnold

If we Americans hate injustice and inequality as passionately as we say we do, would any person in this country lack enough to eat?

We demand a rebellious spirit of those who have no chance to learn that rebellion is possible, but we the privileged hold still and see no evil.

We have good reason to be cautious, to be quiet, not to rock the boat. A lot of peace and comfort is at stake. The mental and moral shift from denial of injustice to consciousness of injustice is often made at very high cost. My contentment, stability, safety, personal affections, may become a sacrifice to the dream of the common good, to the idea of a freedom that I may not live to share, an ideal of justice that nobody may ever attain.

The last words of the Mahabharata are, 'By no means can I attain a goal beyond my reach.' It is likely that justice, a human idea, is a goal beyond human reach. We’re good at inventing things that can’t exist.

Maybe freedom cannot be attained through human institutions but must remain a quality of the mind or spirit not dependent on circumstances, a gift of grace. This (if I understand it) is the religious definition of freedom. My problem with it is that its devaluation of work and circumstance encourages institutional injustices which make the gift of grace inaccessible. A two-year-old child who dies of starvation or a beating or a firebombing has not been granted access to freedom, nor any gift of grace, in any sense in which I can understand the words.

We can attain by our own efforts only an imperfect justice, a limited freedom. Better than none. Let us hold fast to that principle, the love of Freedom, of which the freed slave, the poet, spoke."

Phillis Wheatley's journey began when she was seized from Senegal/Gambia at the age of seven and brought to Boston as a domestic servant. Despite her circumstances, she displayed exceptional intelligence and was taught to read and write by her owners, the Wheatley family. Her talent for poetry emerged early, and she gained recognition with her published elegy for English evangelist George Whitefield.

Facing obstacles in America, Phillis and the Wheatleys sought a publisher in London, where her collection "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was published in 1773, making her the first African American to publish a book of poetry. Despite her literary success, Phillis faced personal challenges, including the deaths of her benefactors and financial struggles. She married John Peters, a free Black man, but their life together was marked by economic hardship and tragedy.

Throughout her life, Phillis continued to write and express her views on freedom and equality, addressing themes of slavery and injustice in her poetry. Despite facing increasing hardship and poverty, she remained committed to advocating for social justice until her death at the age of 31.

Phillis Wheatley's legacy as a celebrated poet and voice for the oppressed continues to inspire generations, reminding us of the power of literature to illuminate the human experience and advocate for change.

The 2017 thriller Get Out, which won Jordon Peele an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay, has been praised for its ability to demonstrate the insidiousness of racism. The movie highlights the idea that even racial “tolerance” is sometimes only thinly-masked fetishism and appropriation. While the movie is new, the sentiment is not. In fact, Phillis Wheatley, the famed African American poet of the American Revolution, has a lot in common Get Out’s protagonist, Chris Washington. Phillis Wheatley was the first African American of either gender to publish a book of poetry. She was born in Africa and taken by slave ship to America when she was about seven years old. In Boston, she was purchased as a personal companion to Mrs. Susannah Wheatley—a prominent member of the community and wife of tailor John Wheatley. In the Journal of Negro Education, scholar Eleanor Smith notes that Phillis was a child prodigy who “grew to be the only representative black woman generally recorded as a product of the Revolutionary Period.” She was taught to read and write, learned English and Latin, and became a showpiece for the Wheatleys. Her acceptance in white circles was due largely to the race-neutral nature of her poems, which she began writing as a young teen. Scholars now believe that within Wheatley’s poems lay double meanings that allowed her to speak directly with her kinsfolk. Wheatley has remained a controversial figure in the black community due to the lack of race consciousness in her poems. However, during the past few decades, scholars have argued that this silence was both ingrained from her masters and necessary for survival. Smith argues that Wheatley’s assimilation into white society was a requirement and not a wish: “By treating her somewhat better than other slaves and by allowing her to come into their personal lives, the Wheatleys were preparing Phillis to be completely controlled by them.”

Like Get Out‘s Chris Washington, Wheatley was often used as a showpiece at white events. Always on the arm of her mistress, she performed readings of her poems and told stories to wealthy guests. While Susannah was harsh with her other slaves, “she loved the ornamentation provided her by Phillis.” In fact, she did not allow Phillis and the other slaves to converse with one another. After the death of both John and Susannah, Wheatley was set free. Despite her status as a prodigy, she was relegated to an impoverished life and was buried in an unmarked grave. Her poetry has survived, and scholars now believe that within her poems lay double meanings that allowed her to speak directly with her kinsfolk.

In the poem “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth…” she writes: No more America in mournful strain Of wrongs, and grievance unredress’d complain, No longer shalt though dread the iron chain, Which wonton tyranny with lawless hand Has made, and with it meant t’ enslave the land.

If you'd like to read her collection of poems, which are in the Public Domain: