Books : The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Encounters with the Founding Fathers
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by: Henry Louis Gates Jr.
List Price: $18.95Amazon.com's Price: $14.78 You Save: $4.17 (22%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 811.1
EAN: 9780465027293
ISBN: 0465027296
Label: Basic Civitas Books
Manufacturer: Basic Civitas Books
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 192
Publication Date: 2003-04
Publisher: Basic Civitas Books
Release Date: April 15, 2003
Sales Rank: 180826
Studio: Basic Civitas Books
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
A moving celebration of the mother of African American literature, from the pen of a master storyteller and scholar.
The slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom when, in 1773, she became the first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in the English language. The toast of London, lauded by Europeans as diverse as Voltaire and Gibbon, Wheatley was for a time the most famous black woman in the West. Though Benjamin Franklin received her and George Washington thanked her for poems she dedicated to him, Thomas Jefferson refused to acknowledge her gifts. 'Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Wheatley,' he wrote, 'but it could not produce a poet.' In other words, slaves have misery in their lives, and they have souls, but they lack the intellectual and aesthetic endowments required to create literature.
In this book based on his 2002 Jefferson Lecture in the Humanities at the Library of Congress, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson have played in shaping the black literary tradition.
He brings to life the characters and debates that fermented around Wheatley in her day and illustrates the peculiar history that resulted in Thomas Jefferson's being lauded as a father of the black freedom struggle and Phillis Wheatley's vilification as something of an Uncle Tom. It is a story told with all the lyricism and critical skill that have placed Gates at the forefront of American letters.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - A Study of A Poetess's Reception through the Centuries
Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s _The Trials Phillis Wheatley_ considers Phillis Wheatley's career through the eyes of her readers over two centuries, from elite Massachussetts whites who in 1772 quizzed Wheatley to determine if she, a young slave, had indeed composed the poems herself, to twentieth-century critics who find her voice inauthentic and too forgiving of her white enslavers. Gates' book is a longer version of the prestigious Jefferson Lecture, which he gave in 2002, and is a great introduction ... Read More
Rating:  - Refreshing Reminder from Gates
Gates' book places the writing life of Phillis Wheatley into a context that should prompt readers to reexamine popular condemnations (past and present) of her credibility and literary merit. This text is a refreshing reminder that we readers have a responsibility "to learn to read Wheatley anew, unblinkered by the anxieties of her time and ours. That's the only way to let Phillis Wheatley take a stand. The challenge isn't to read white, or read black; it is to read. If Wheatley stood for anything, it ... Read More
Rating: - An interesting read
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 ... Read More
Rating: - Nice little tribute to Phillis Wheatley
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 ... Read More
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