The age of Phillis
(2020)

Nonfiction

Book

Call Numbers:
811.54/JEFFERS,H

Availability

Locations Call Number Status
Adult Nonfiction 811.54/JEFFERS,H Available

Details

PUBLISHED
Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, [2020]
DESCRIPTION

213 pages ; 24 cm

ISBN/ISSN
9780819579492, 0819579491, 9780819579492
LANGUAGE
English
NOTES

"A collection of original poems speaking to the life and times of Phillis Wheatley, a Colonial America-era poet brought to Boston as a slave"--

"In 1773, a young, African American woman named Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry that challenged Western prejudices about African and female intellectual capabilities. 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 in the Gambia, West Africa, her life with her white American owners, her friendship with Obour Tanner, and her marriage to the enigmatic John Peters. 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." --