Stars: ★★★★★ (Study This Book)
Premise
Around six years old, Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped from West Africa and trafficked to the United States in 1761. She became the first person of African descent to write a book of poetry published in English. The prevailing theory at the time was that Black people were less than human because they did not have the ability to produce art. When Phillis, who did not even speak English when human traffickers sold her to the Wheatley family, began writing beautiful poetry in English in her teens, she challenged this stupidity at its core. She was brought before a tribunal to determine whether she had written the poems herself.
Loved
- The willingness to engage complicated issues
I appreciated they way that the author told the story of Phillis first, then addressed the way in which the response impacted African-American art for centuries, and finished with an explanation of why Wheatley has been a controversial inclusion in recent decades. He contrasted the poems “On Being Brought from Africa to America” with “To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth.” He makes the argument that, while the first poem is among the most reviled in all Black literature, it doesn’t necessarily the whole of Wheatley’s writings. He concludes the book with a question that leads to careful thought. “If Frederick Douglass could recuperate and champion Thomas Jefferson, during the Civil War of all times, is it possible to do the same for a modest young poet named Phillis Wheatley?” (p87) - Relevance to the current conversation about the Founding Fathers
American is in the middle of a reckoning about how to view the foundation of this country and how to view those who helped build it. This book provides a valuable perspective in that conversation. Founding Fathers like Thomas Jefferson and George Washington perpetuated the systemic kidnapping, trafficking, sexual abuse and mass murder of hundreds of thousands of people. They also established a republican form of government that in its greatest ideal (though not in reality, even today) gave each person a voice in the way that they are governed. How do we reconcile these things in order to think and speak honestly about these historical figures?
Gates argues “I should say that when we discuss the blind spots of giants like Jefferson, we must do so with the humility of knowing that in future decades, others shall condescendingly be discussing our own blind spots, if they bother discussing us at all” (p40). He then goes on to detail horrific quotations from Jefferson about Black people. Again, he engages these difficult conversations in a honest, straightforward way, using Wheatley as a microcosm of the questions being vehemently argued across the United States. - The descriptions of the weight that rested on Wheatley’s shoulders
This teenage victim of human trafficking walked into a room of old, white men with the responsibility of convincing them that Black people were human. The premise of the trial was that the tribunal should determine whether she wrote the poems herself, but the implications of that decision extended far beyond the decision to publish the book with Wheatley’s name listed as the author. If Black people could produce art, song, and poetry, they were humans, the same as White people. If they were humans, then the entire institution of slavery was immoral and needed to end immediately.
Despite the tribunal’s decision that Phillis did indeed write those poems, it did not have the domino affect some hoped and some dreaded. The United States fought the Civil War more than 100 years after the publication of Phillis’ book to answer the question of slavery. But in that room, a young woman carried the weight of an entire race.
Didn’t Love
I wanted the story to end in triumph, but Wheatley had a very hard life and died at the age of 30 without ever publishing a second book of poetry. Her publication earned her freedom, and she was able to marry. But her marriage did not last, and she could not get enough subscribers to justify the publishing of another volume. When she died, her last surviving child died too, and they were buried together in Boston.
Lessons Learned
- Thomas Jefferson was unwilling to believe in the humanity of Black people. Even conceding that Wheatley wrote her poems, he staunchly refused to believe that she was capable of any creativity beyond imitation of white men. Gates thoroughly documents Jefferson’s beliefs that the entire Black race lacked intellect and was inferior to the entirety of the White race. No evidence could convince him of the contrary, and he was one of Wheatley’s greatest detractors.
- “Indeed, when Wole Soyinka received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1986, a press release on behalf of the Nigerian government declared that—because of this prize—no longer could the world see Africans as distinctly inferior. The specter of Thomas Jefferson haunts even there, in Africa in 1986, as does the shadow of Phillis Wheatley” (p66). This quotation near the end of the book shows how Gates believed the beliefs of the men who put Phillis on trial still impacted Black art centuries later.
This is very short book because it was based on a lecture that Gates gave in the Library of Congress in 2002. It does not take long to read, but it is well-worth every minute.