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Title: The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Encounters with the Founding Fathers by Henry Louis Gates Jr. ISBN: 0-465-02729-6 Publisher: BasicCivitas Books Pub. Date: 15 April, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (2 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An interesting read
Comment: 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
Summary: Nice little tribute to Phillis Wheatley
Comment: 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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Title: Complete Writings (Penguin Classics) by Phillis Wheatley, Vincent Carretta ISBN: 014042430X Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) Pub. Date: 30 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: An American Plague : The True and Terrifying Story of the Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793 by Jim Murphy ISBN: 0395776082 Publisher: Clarion Books Pub. Date: 23 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Konstantin Stanislavsky (Routledge Performance Practitioners) by Bella Merlin, Franc Chamberlain ISBN: 0415258863 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: December, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Cinemas of the World : Film and Society in the Twentieth Century by James Chapman ISBN: 1861891628 Publisher: Reaktion Books Pub. Date: 15 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision by Barbara Ransby ISBN: 0807827789 Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr Pub. Date: 28 April, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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