"Some Accounts"
19
Reading from the Gentlemen's magazine
image_header
2020-12-11T14:37:08-08:00
As previously mentioned, Phillis Wheatley started her life in Gambia Africa and was captured by slave traders and brought to the American Colonies. She was bought by the Wheatley's when she was seven years old and, unlike many other slaves during this time period, she was exposed to literature and taught how to be literate. She would become a poet due to her exposure by the Wheatley family to the Bible, history, and English Literature ("Phillis Wheatley"). She rose to fame and became the first African American poetry writer in modern times, after her book was published in 1773, the Wheatley family emancipated Phillis Wheatley. Wheatley was able to buy her freedom with the creation, publication and selling of her numerous poems. The piece embedded below shows an expert from Gentlemen's Magazine surrounding a letter written by John Wheatley to support the fact that Phillis Wheatley was the sole creator of her work. Phillis Wheatley faced many critics and supporters as she was the first African American woman to be published and my people doubted her intellect and credibility because she was an African American woman and slave. The excerpt pushes back against any critics and emphasizes that Phillis Wheatley is a talented and intelligent young woman who is putting out her own work. John Wheatley, Phillis' owner, wrote a letter to the publisher of Phillis Wheatley’s work. In this letter, he describes her drive to learn more and how it did not come from a formal education but from his family and how she had a curiosity about learning the Latin tongue. In the end of the letter Mr. Wheatley says with what seems to be love that he was the one who bought her and the one that she lives with now.
