The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley

Starred review from January 9, 2023
Waldstreicher (Slavery’s Constitution), a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, delivers a magisterial biography of 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784). Tracing Wheatley’s trajectory from a promising student to a national celebrity, he explores her development as an artist and focuses on how Wheatley crafted “subversive” meanings and considered “piety, politics, and race” in her work. He begins in 1761 with Wheatley’s arrival by slave ship in Boston, where as a young girl she was enslaved by the Wheatley family until they granted her freedom in 1773, shortly after the publication of her first poetry collection. Waldstreicher excels at teasing out the subtle political messages within Wheatley’s poetry, contending, for instance, that “On Being Brought from Africa to America” satirizes the racism critics accuse it of perpetuating. The author candidly addresses gaps in the historical record, such as when he constructs a plausible account of the under-documented last six years of Wheatley’s life, when her marriage to a domineering grocer took her out of the limelight. The historical scholarship dazzles and the incisive analysis of Wheatley’s poetry suggests she had a more “liberatory political agenda” than she’s often credited for. The result is an indispensable take on an essential early American poet.