Publisher's Synopsis
Phillis Wheatley Peters also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly was the first African-American author of a published book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was enslaved by the Wheatley family of Boston.
Phillis Wheatley has always been a difficult figure for people to wrap their minds around, both during her life and centuries after it. Indeed, she fits no easy stereotypes that historians or contemporaries liked to use to classify their subjects. Even her name is complicated, with her first name being spelled at times "Phyllis," and her surname being given without the extra "e" in the final syllable. Like so much of her life, her name was not the one given to her by her parents but instead by the people who first enslaved her. In the same vein, she was married, but for such a short time that her husband's surname was never fully attached to her own.
Then there was the matter of her "career," which has always escaped definition. In the 18th century, enslaved people were not supposed to have been educated, certainly not to the level that Wheatley was, nor were they supposed to have creative abilities beyond those taught to them by their masters. In a time and place where slaves were rarely taught to read, they were not expected to write better poetry than the vast majority of their peers.
