Volume A
Beginnings to 1820: Literary Workshops
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley was kidnapped from West Africa (probably Senegal or Gambia) when she was six or seven years old, brought to America on a slave ship, and sold in Boston to the wealthy Wheatley family in 1761. Recognizing Phillis as a precocious child with remarkable talents, the Wheatleys soon decided to reduce her domestic duties, convert her to Christianity, and provide her with an education—a highly irregular project for slaveowners to undertake. Phillis adopted evangelical Christianity and began reading widely and writing her own poetry. After publishing two poems in American newspapers, Phillis sought subscriptions to help finance the publication of a book of her poetry. Unable to find patrons willing to underwrite a black slave’s poetry in America, Phillis eventually traveled to England, engaged the support of the Countess of Huntingdon, and published her book, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, through a British press in 1773. After Susanna Wheatley granted Phillis her freedom in 1774, the poet found it even more difficult to publish her poetry and letters. She was never able to finance a second book and died in poverty.
Wheatley’s poetry is characterized by its use of the conventions of neoclassical verse and its careful approach to potentially controversial subjects. Some literary critics have perceived the restraint and discipline of her verse as signs that Wheatley lacked racial consciousness or was uninterested in denouncing slavery. Others, however, have found in her poetry evidence of a meaningful commitment to addressing—and protesting—slavery and racial inequality. In “On Being Brought from Africa to America,” Wheatley recounts the effects of being introduced in America both to Christianity and to racist assumptions about black inferiority.
PHILLIS WHEATLEY (c. 1753-1784)
Born in Africa, probably in present-day Senegal or Gambia, Phillis Wheatley was brought to Boston when she was around eight years old to be a companion for Susannah Wheatley, the wife of a wealthy tailor. Mrs. Wheatley, part of an enlightened group of Boston Christians who believed that slavery could not be tolerated in Christian households, recognized Phillis's intelligence and saw that she was taught to read and write; Phillis studied the Bible, read Latin poets, and was influenced by Milton, Pope, and Gray. She became well known for her poem eulogizing the Reverend George Whitfield, and when she was nineteen or twenty she traveled to England, accompanied by the Wheatleys' son, with a manuscript of her work. Her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral (1773) inaugurated the black American literary tradition. A group of eighteen prominent citizens of Boston, including the state governor and John Hancock, asserted that Wheatley had composed the poems, although "under the Disadvantage of serving as a Slave in a Family in this Town." A second volume was proposed but never published, and most of the poems and letters have been lost.
'Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land,
Taught my benighted soul to understand
That there's a God, that there's a Saviour too:
Once I redemption neither sought nor knew.
Some view our sable race with scornful eye,
"Their colour is a diabolic die."
Remember, Christians, Negroes, black as Cain,
May be refin'd, and join th' angelic train.
1. What kind of audience do you think Wheatley was intending to reach with this poem? Whom does she address directly? What does she want to persuade her readers of?
2. In line 2, what does the speaker say she has been “taught to understand”? How does her understanding compare to the understanding of the “Christians” she mentions in line 7?
3. How would you describe the tone of this poem? Grateful? Rebellious? Measured? Humble? Outraged? Apologetic? A mixture of these?