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The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Encounters with the Founding Fathers

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Encounters with the Founding Fathers

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Refreshing Reminder from Gates
Review: Gates' book places the writing life of Phillis Wheatley into a context that should prompt readers to reexamine popular condemnations (past and present) of her credibility and literary merit. This text is a refreshing reminder that we readers have a responsibility "to learn to read Wheatley anew, unblinkered by the anxieties of her time and ours. That's the only way to let Phillis Wheatley take a stand. The challenge isn't to read white, or read black; it is to read. If Wheatley stood for anything, it was the creed that culture was, could be, the equal possession of all humanity. It was a lesson she was swift to teach, and that we have been slow to learn" (89-90). This book is a quick read and would be an ideal text for instructors.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: An interesting read
Review: In 1773 a young woman burst onto the literary scene. And what made this particular author a sensation? The young woman in question was Phillis Wheatley, an African slave writing poetry in English. Her slender books of poems was a literary first, causing critics to mutter.

Brought before an panel of eighteen learned gentleman of the time, Phillis Wheatley proved that persons of African descent could think, read and write works of literature. For a few brief years, Phillis was a author known to both the colonies and Europe, think Oprah, think Alice Walker, think Maya Angelou of her day. Sadly, with Revolution at hand, her literary career stumbled with Phillis and her only surviving child dying much too young.

But that was not the end of Phillis Wheatley. Her surviving works have endured and been subjected to levels of awe and loathing in the centuries since her death. In some camps, Phillis Wheatley is a mother of the slave narrative, in others a sell-out, an Aunt Thomasina making her then masters happy.

Author Henry Louis Gates, Jr does a wonderful job of looking at the literary life of a much loved and much reviled author. The only jarring point? The covers of this fine volume are much too close together, THE TRIALS OF PHILLIS WHEATLEY was a quick read and I found myself sad to have the book end.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Nice little tribute to Phillis Wheatley
Review: Mostly a summary of the literary career of Phillis Wheatley, a teenaged slave, born in Africa and later bought by John and Susanna Wheatley of Boston for less than ten pounds, who would unknowingly kickstart the African American literary tradition with her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," published in 1773. Described by Gates as "the Oprah Winfrey of her time," Wheatley defied the conventional racist wisdom of the time by proving that people of African descent could write poetry and produce European notions of Art. Gates does a good job of tracing the trajectory of her work throughout the years following her sad demise (her poetry would grant her manumission, but she would die free, poor and alone at the age of thirty). Gates' main critique in the book is of the unfair criticism he feels critics of the Black Power Movement gave her, by questioning her "authenticity" and accusing her of being "too white." He ties this in to Thomas Jefferson's criticisms of Wheatley some two-hundred years earlier, who dismissed her poetry as bad enough to prove that Africans indeed were inferior to Anglos in the arena of "reason." Citing a recent poll suggesting that "acting white" was aligned with "speaking standard English, getting straight A's, or even visiting the Smithsonian," Gates uses a bizarre logic to make his ultimate point: "In reviving the ideology of 'authenticity'--especially in a Hip Hop world where too many of our children think it's easier to become Michael Jordan than Vernon Jordan--we have ourselves reforged the manacles of an earlier, admittedly racist era" (p. 84-5). Whether one views Jefferson's or even Amiri Baraka's criticisms of Wheatley's poetry as remotely similar, Gates' little book does a tidy little job of setting up for the reader the historical processes and miracles that allowed for Wheatley to publish the poems (--good or bad--it's up to you to decide!) that initiated the African American literary tradition.


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