The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley
Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Total Pages: 297
Release: 2023-03-07
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1429969458

A New York Times notable book of 2023 | A finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for biography “[An] erudite, enlightening new biography . . . [Waldstreicher’s] interpretations equal Wheatley’s own intentional verse, making it a joy to follow along as he unpacks her words and their arrangement.” —Tiya Miles, The Atlantic “Thoroughly researched, beautifully rendered and cogently argued . . . The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is [. . .] historical biography at its best.” —Kerri Greenidge, The New York Times Book Review (Editors’ Choice) A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary poetry set African American literature at the heart of the American Revolution. Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors, and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the injustice of her enslaved condition. “Can I then but pray / Others may never feel tyrannic sway?” By doing so, she added her voice to a vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent with British rule; before and after her emancipation, her verses shook up racial etiquette and used familiar forms to create bold new meanings. She demonstrated a complex but crucial fact of the times: that the American Revolution both strengthened and limited Black slavery. In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the fullest account to date of Wheatley’s life and works, correcting myths, reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of her verse and the revolutionary era. Throughout The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, he demonstrates the continued vitality and resonance of a woman who wrote, in a founding gesture of American literature, “Thy Power, O Liberty, makes strong the weak / And (wond’rous instinct) Ethiopians speak.”

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley
Author: Sneed B. Collard
Publisher: Marshall Cavendish
Total Pages: 52
Release: 2010
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780761445036

It's not easy to find biographies that truly appeal to very young readers. Perhaps it's because they take a special talent to write! What's needed is an author who can distill a lot of complicated facts into clear, simple concepts, add a touch of warmth and humor, and create a story that a little kid won't want to put down. Add to the mix some lovely child-friendly art set in a framework of pastels and that's Benchmark's American Heroes. These charming titles, all carefully researched and well-documented, will fire the imaginations of young readers and help set them on a lifelong path to learning.

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley
Author: Vincent Carretta
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2011
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0820333387

Reveals the fascinating life of Phillis Wheatley, the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book, and only the second woman to do so in America, and also to do so while she was a slave and a teenager.

The Age of Phillis

The Age of Phillis
Author: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2020-02-20
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0819579513

“An arresting and meticulously researched collection of poems” about the life of Phillis Wheatley, the first black woman to publish a book in America (Ms. Magazine). In 1773, a young African American woman named Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry, Poems on various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773). When Wheatley’s book appeared, her words would challenge Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. Her words would astound many and irritate others, but one thing was clear: This young woman was extraordinary. Based on fifteen years of archival research, The Age of Phillis, by award-winning writer Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, imagines the life and times of Wheatley: her childhood with her parents in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters, and her untimely death at the age of about thirty-three. Woven throughout are poems about Wheatley's “age”—the era that encompassed political, philosophical, and religious upheaval, as well as the transatlantic slave trade. For the first time in verse, Wheatley’s relationship to black people and their individual “mercies” is foregrounded, and here we see her as not simply a racial or literary symbol, but a human being who lived and loved while making her indelible mark on history.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley
Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
Total Pages: 102
Release: 2010-10
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1458715302

In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom. The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to build an extraordinary body of literature in their efforts to prove him wrong. In The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson played in shaping the black literary tradition. Writing with all the lyricism and critical skill that place him at the forefront of American letters, Gates brings to life the characters, debates, and controversy that surrounded Wheatley in her day and ours.

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley
Author: Phillis Wheatley
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 98
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 0486115291

At the age of 19, Phillis Wheatley was the first black American poet to publish a book. Her elegies and odes offer fascinating glimpses of the beginnings of African-American literary traditions. Includes a selection from the Common Core State Standards Initiative.

Complete Writings

Complete Writings
Author: Phillis Wheatley
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2001-02-01
Genre: Poetry
ISBN: 9780140424300

The extraordinary writings of Phillis Wheatley, a slave girl turned published poet In 1761, a young girl arrived in Boston on a slave ship, sold to the Wheatley family, and given the name Phillis Wheatley. Struck by Phillis' extraordinary precociousness, the Wheatleys provided her with an education that was unusual for a woman of the time and astonishing for a slave. After studying English and classical literature, geography, the Bible, and Latin, Phillis published her first poem in 1767 at the age of 14, winning much public attention and considerable fame. When Boston publishers who doubted its authenticity rejected an initial collection of her poetry, Wheatley sailed to London in 1773 and found a publisher there for Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. This volume collects both Wheatley's letters and her poetry: hymns, elegies, translations, philosophical poems, tales, and epyllions--including a poignant plea to the Earl of Dartmouth urging freedom for America and comparing the country's condition to her own. With her contemplative elegies and her use of the poetic imagination to escape an unsatisfactory world, Wheatley anticipated the Romantic Movement of the following century. The appendices to this edition include poems of Wheatley's contemporary African-American poets: Lucy Terry, Jupiter Harmon, and Francis Williams. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Runaway America

Runaway America
Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Hill and Wang
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2005-08-10
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1466821523

Scientist, abolitionist, revolutionary: that is the Benjamin Franklin we know and celebrate. To this description, the talented young historian David Waldstreicher shows we must add runaway, slave master, and empire builder. But Runaway America does much more than revise our image of a beloved founding father. Finding slavery at the center of Franklin's life, Waldstreicher proves it was likewise central to the Revolution, America's founding, and the very notion of freedom we associate with both. Franklin was the sole Founding Father who was once owned by someone else and was among the few to derive his fortune from slavery. As an indentured servant, Franklin fled his master before his term was complete; as a struggling printer, he built a financial empire selling newspapers that not only advertised the goods of a slave economy (not to mention slaves) but also ran the notices that led to the recapture of runaway servants. Perhaps Waldstreicher's greatest achievement is in showing that this was not an ironic outcome but a calculated one. America's freedom, no less than Franklin's, demanded that others forgo liberty. Through the life of Franklin, Runaway America provides an original explanation to the paradox of American slavery and freedom.

Slavery's Constitution

Slavery's Constitution
Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2010-06-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 142995907X

“A historian finds the seeds of an inevitable civil war embedded in the ‘contradictions, ambiguities, and silences’ about slavery in the Constitution.” —Kirkus Reviews Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery’s place at the heart of the US Constitution. Famously, the Constitution never mentions slavery. And yet, of its eighty-four clauses, six were directly concerned with slaves and the interests of their owners. Five other clauses had implications for slavery that were considered and debated by the delegates to the 1787 Constitutional Convention and the citizens of the states during ratification. Slavery was as important to the making of the Constitution as the Constitution was to the survival of slavery. By tracing slavery from before the revolution, through the Constitution’s framing, and into the public debate that followed, Waldstreicher rigorously shows that slavery was not only actively discussed behind the closed and locked doors of the Constitutional Convention, but that it was also deftly woven into the Constitution itself. For one thing, slavery was central to the American economy, and since the document set the stage for a national economy, the Constitution could not avoid having implications for slavery. Even more, since the government defined sovereignty over individuals, as well as property in them, discussion of sovereignty led directly to debate over slavery’s place in the new republic. Finding meaning in silences that have long been ignored, Slavery’s Constitution is a vital and sorely needed contribution to the conversation about the origins, impact, and meaning of our nation’s founding document.