Phillis Wheatley: The Life and Legacy of the Slave Who Became Colonial America's Most Famous Poet

"The world is a severe schoolmaster, for its frowns are less dangerous than its smiles and flatteries, and it is a difficult task to keep in the path of wisdom." (Phillis Wheatley) 

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. 

Her "career" 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 obviously not expected to write better poetry than the vast majority of their peers. 

But if Wheatley refused to be placed in a box and labeled during her life, that has been even more the case after her death. Given that she was a child who was transported from Africa and raised in slavery, her poetry contains none of the sorrow or angst that modern readers would anticipate seeing. In fact, in one of her most controversial works, "On being brought from Africa to America", she wrote: