The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429969458
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

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Book Description
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.”

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 1429969458
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 297

Get Book Here

Book Description
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 PDF Author: Berkeley Rae Owens
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 30

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Book Description


Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: Sneed B. Collard
Publisher: Cavendish Square Publishing, LLC
ISBN: 0761440577
Category : Juvenile Nonfiction
Languages : en
Pages : 49

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Book Description
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.

The Age of Phillis

The Age of Phillis PDF Author: Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
Publisher: Wesleyan University Press
ISBN: 0819579513
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 233

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Book Description
“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.

New Essays on Phillis Wheatley

New Essays on Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: John C. Shields
Publisher: Univ. of Tennessee Press
ISBN: 1572337265
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 433

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Book Description
The first African American to publish a book on any subject, poet Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784) has long been denigrated by literary critics who refused to believe that a black woman could produce such dense, intellectual work. In recent decades, however, Wheatley's work has come under new scrutiny as the literature of the eighteenth century and the impact of African American literature have been reconceived. Fourteen prominent Wheatley scholars consider her work from a variety of angles, affirming her rise into the first rank of American writers. --from publisher description.

Phillis Wheatley

Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: Vincent Carretta
Publisher: University of Georgia Press
ISBN: 0820346640
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 318

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Book Description
Carretta offers the first full-length biography of Phillis Wheatley (1753?-1784), who became the first English-speaking person of African descent to publish a book and only the second woman--of any race or background--to do so in America.

Phillis Wheatley Chooses Freedom

Phillis Wheatley Chooses Freedom PDF Author: G. J. Barker-Benfield
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781479875672
Category : African American women poets
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Poems of Phillis Wheatley

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: Phillis Wheatley
Publisher: Courier Corporation
ISBN: 0486115291
Category : Poetry
Languages : en
Pages : 98

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Book Description
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.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley PDF Author: Henry Louis Gates, Jr.
Publisher: ReadHowYouWant.com
ISBN: 1458715302
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 102

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Book Description
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.

Slavery's Constitution

Slavery's Constitution PDF Author: David Waldstreicher
Publisher: Macmillan + ORM
ISBN: 142995907X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 205

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Book Description
Taking on decades of received wisdom, David Waldstreicher has written the first book to recognize slavery's place at the heart of the U.S. 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. This "peculiar institution" was not a moral blind spot for America's otherwise enlightened framers, nor was it the expression of a mere economic interest. 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.