"Thoroughly researched, beautifully rendered and cogently argued . . .
The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is [. . .] historical biography at
its best." --Kerri Greenidge, The New York Times Book Review (Editors'
Choice)
**
A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose extraordinary
poetry set African American literature at the heart of the American
Revolution.**
Admired by George Washington, ridiculed by Thomas Jefferson, published
in London, and read far and wide, Phillis Wheatley led one of the most
extraordinary American lives. Seized in West Africa and forced into
slavery as a child, she was sold to a merchant family in Boston, where
she became a noted poet at a young age. Mastering the Bible, Greek and
Latin translations, and the works of Pope and Milton, she composed
elegies for local elites, celebrated political events, praised warriors,
and used her verse to variously lampoon, question, and assert the
injustice of her enslaved condition. "Can I then but pray / Others may
never feel tyrannic sway?" By doing so, she added her voice to a
vibrant, multisided conversation about race, slavery, and discontent
with British rule; before and after her emancipation, her verses shook
up racial etiquette and used familiar forms to create bold new meanings.
She demonstrated a complex but crucial fact of the times: that the
American Revolution both strengthened and limited Black slavery.
In this new biography, the historian David Waldstreicher offers the
fullest account to date of Wheatley's life and works, correcting myths,
reconstructing intimate friendships, and deepening our understanding of
her verse and the revolutionary era. Throughout The Odyssey of Phillis
Wheatley, he demonstrates the continued vitality and resonance of a
woman who wrote, in a founding gesture of American literature, "Thy
Power, O Liberty, makes strong the weak / And (wond'rous instinct)
Ethiopians speak."
