If you can, respond to the questions (choose maybe two and don't spend more than an hour on this) in the response section below. If you cannot log in there, send me your responses and I will post them as I can. Try to engage with each other as you see responses posted. If you notice other important issues that you would like to discuss, you can raise them here too.
1)
The
Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano was wildly popular
when it first appeared and went through numerous editions. It has been called a slave narrative, an
abolitionist tract, a spiritual autobiography.
Pinpoint some sections that you have read:
the opening where Equiano maps out his childhood, the chapters where he describes
the brutality of slavery as he experienced it, his description of his
conversion to Christianity, his plans at the end as he describes them in letter
to the queen to colonize Africa. What do
you think is the main purpose of the “life” as Equiano presents it in this
text? Write a paragraph or two and as
others respond, engage with each other.
2)
As in other memoirs and auto/biographies
that we are looking at, critics and historians are interested in the
“truthfulness” or not of what is set on the page for posterity, for the
reader. In Equiano’s memory is the
memory of the slave. When Vincent
Carretta claimed in 1999 That he had evidence that Equiano was in fact born in
South Carolina and not in Eboe, he created a huge uproar, especially among
black scholars.
What are the implications of the claim that
Equiano was not born in Eboe? What does
the “life” and the “narrative” lack if you take away the Eboan roots of the
narrator here?
Respond to Brycchan Carey's points below in the chart. What further would you add?
3)
What is the importance to the narrative of
Equiano’s insistence on his Christian conversion? In Ch IV he tells us of his baptism. He also calls himself a “black Christian.” He starts the narrative by suggesting that he
is a particular favorite of heaven. How
and to what purpose does his Christianity inform this life as you apprehend it
(and based on those sections you have read)?
Remember that, as Equiano understands his birth year, he is just a bit
younger than Boswell and a contemporary with him. Compare and contrast the Christian element in
The London Journal and here in The Interesting Narrative. Do you feel there is a great sincerity or
self-servingness with one or the other?
4)
The first time Equiano tries to buy his freedom, he is told by Captain Doran that he "speaks too much English." How, at the beginning of the text especially but also at other points, does Equiano adopt the languages of the world he has been sold into? What is your response to this?
http://www.brycchancarey.com/equiano/index.htm
Brycchan Carey on
Where Was Olaudah Equiano Born?
(And Why Does It Matter?)
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| The bottom line is that we just don't know. As the above table shows, there is evidence on both sides of the debate. Just about the only thing we can say for certain is that, when he was younger, Equiano told people he was from Carolina, but when he was older, he told people he was from Africa. Whether you believe the younger Equiano or the older Equiano is entirely up to you... | |
These are just some of the arguments in favour of, and against, the proposition that Equiano was born in South Carolina and not Africa. I have explored these arguments in more depth in an article published in 2008 in the journal 1650-1850:
You may also like to look in the Equiano Bibliography for further reading. Carretta's original arguments can be found in the academic journal Slavery and Abolition, in the introduction to his second edition of The Interesting Narrative, and in his biography of Equiano. See:- Vincent Carretta, Equiano, the African: Biography of a Self Made Man (University of Georgia Press, 2005).
- Vincent Carretta, 'Olaudah Equiano or Gustavus Vassa? New Light on an Eighteenth-century Question of Identity', Slavery and Abolition, 20, 3 (December 1999), 96-105
- Vincent Carretta, 'Introduction' in The Interesting Narrative and Other Writings, edited with an introduction and notes by Vincent Carretta (London and New York: Penguin, 2003), pp. x-xi.
Text © Brycchan Carey 2003-2013
Henry Louis Gates, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley
Henry Louis Gates, Jr. e Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding
Fathers. New York: Basic Books, 2003. ix + 129 pp. $18.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-465-02729-3.
Reviewed by Babacar M’Baye (Department of English and Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University) Published on H-USA (April, 2004)
Phillis Wheatley and omas Jefferson: e Birth of African-AmericanLiterary Criticism
Reviewed by Babacar M’Baye (Department of English and Department of Pan-African Studies, Kent State University) Published on H-USA (April, 2004)
Phillis Wheatley and omas Jefferson: e Birth of African-AmericanLiterary Criticism
In e Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black
Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers, Henry
Louis Gates, Jr., examines the significance of the work
of the eighteenth-century African-American poet Phillis
Wheatley in three ways: (1) through analysis of Wheat-
ley’s intellectual bales with a White leadership that
viewed the Black race as inferior; (2) through a study
of the author’s status as an African slave in America;
and (3) through an exploration of the poet’s impact in
how Americans, Whites and Blacks, have, since before
the publication of omas Jefferson’s Notes on the State of
Virginia (1787), viewed race in narrow and dichotomous
terms. By prioritizing Wheatley’s status as an African
slave who proved through her work that Blacks were hu-
man, Gates makes significant contributions not only to
the growing scholarship in Black Atlantic Studies, but
also to the inquiries on the history of race in America,
especially the historical construction of Whiteness as an
essential identity that subsumes Blackness. Tracing the
beginnings of a long tradition of White imagination of
Blackness, Gates reveals, through analysis of a vast liter-
ature spanning from the writings of Jefferson and of ear-
lier intellectuals to the work of critics of the Black Arts
Movement of the 1960s, the large impact that Wheatley’s
work has had on American culture.
First, e Trials of Phillis Wheatley contributes to the groundbreaking studies on Wheatley that have emerged since the 1990s and earlier from the scholars of the Black Atlantic world. According to Paul Gilroy, the term “Black Atlantic world” refers to the transformations that resulted from “this historical conjunction–the stereo- phonic, bilingual, or bifocal cultural forms originated by, but no longer the exclusive property of, blacks dispersed within the structures of feeling, producing, communi- cating, and remembering.”[1] is scholarship is mainly concerned with the historical and cultural connections, disconnections, and struggles among Black communities from around the world. Migration and resistance are
First, e Trials of Phillis Wheatley contributes to the groundbreaking studies on Wheatley that have emerged since the 1990s and earlier from the scholars of the Black Atlantic world. According to Paul Gilroy, the term “Black Atlantic world” refers to the transformations that resulted from “this historical conjunction–the stereo- phonic, bilingual, or bifocal cultural forms originated by, but no longer the exclusive property of, blacks dispersed within the structures of feeling, producing, communi- cating, and remembering.”[1] is scholarship is mainly concerned with the historical and cultural connections, disconnections, and struggles among Black communities from around the world. Migration and resistance are
major dynamics of this Black Atlantic world. As Gilroy
wrote: “e history of the black Atlantic since then, con-
tinually crisscrossed by the movement of black people–
not only as commodities–but engaged in various strug-
gles towards emancipation, autonomy, and citizenship, is
a means to re-examine the problems of nationality, loca-
tion, identity, and historical memory.”[2]
e Trials of Phillis Wheatley contributes to the in- quiry that Gilroy outlines above because it represents Wheatley as a major participant in the struggle for free- dom and equality in the Black Diaspora. First, as Gates suggests, Wheatley’s resistance might have begun on the slave-ship called the Phillis which brought her to Boston on July 11, 1761, when she was about seven years old (pp. 16-17). According to Gates, among the cargo of the ship, which had recently returned from gathering slaves in Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the Isles de Los, off the coast of Guinea, was “a slender frail, female child” who was probably from the Senegambian coast of Africa (p. 16). Although he identifies Wheatley as a Senegambian, Gates does not examine the historical circumstances in West Africa which led to Wheatley’s enslavement. In this sense, e Trials of Phillis Wheatley is narrow and par- ticularist because it does not reflect the “Africancentric” approach to Black Atlantic history which, as Paul Love- joy suggests in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (2000), “introduces a perspective that is not centered in the his- tory of Europe or colonial America but instead in trans- Atlantic origins.”[3]
Nevertheless, Gates’s book is, to a limited degree, “trans-Atlantic” since it reflects the influence of Wheat- ley’s work in the international formation of a Black At- lantic literary culture. Referring to Vincent Carea, a major scholar of eighteenth-century Black Atlantic liter- ature, Gates argues that a 1772 court ruling in England, which “made it illegal for slaves who had come to Eng- land to be forcibly returned to the colonies,” helped create a positive atmosphere for Blacks (p. 31). Despite its in-
e Trials of Phillis Wheatley contributes to the in- quiry that Gilroy outlines above because it represents Wheatley as a major participant in the struggle for free- dom and equality in the Black Diaspora. First, as Gates suggests, Wheatley’s resistance might have begun on the slave-ship called the Phillis which brought her to Boston on July 11, 1761, when she was about seven years old (pp. 16-17). According to Gates, among the cargo of the ship, which had recently returned from gathering slaves in Senegal, Sierra Leone, and the Isles de Los, off the coast of Guinea, was “a slender frail, female child” who was probably from the Senegambian coast of Africa (p. 16). Although he identifies Wheatley as a Senegambian, Gates does not examine the historical circumstances in West Africa which led to Wheatley’s enslavement. In this sense, e Trials of Phillis Wheatley is narrow and par- ticularist because it does not reflect the “Africancentric” approach to Black Atlantic history which, as Paul Love- joy suggests in Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (2000), “introduces a perspective that is not centered in the his- tory of Europe or colonial America but instead in trans- Atlantic origins.”[3]
Nevertheless, Gates’s book is, to a limited degree, “trans-Atlantic” since it reflects the influence of Wheat- ley’s work in the international formation of a Black At- lantic literary culture. Referring to Vincent Carea, a major scholar of eighteenth-century Black Atlantic liter- ature, Gates argues that a 1772 court ruling in England, which “made it illegal for slaves who had come to Eng- land to be forcibly returned to the colonies,” helped create a positive atmosphere for Blacks (p. 31). Despite its in-
1
volvement in slavery, England, unlike the United States,
gave Black intellectuals the opportunity to publish their
writings. As Gates shows, in 1772, when Wheatley finally
received from her eighteen White examiners a document
aesting to her ability to write literature, her benefac-
tor and owner Susanna Wheatley turned to her friends
in England for help (p. 30). Gates explains: “rough
the captain of the commercial ship that John Wheatley
used for trade with England, Susanna engaged a London
publisher, Archibald Bell, to bring out the manuscript” (p.
31). Gates continues: “And so, against the greatest odds,
Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral became
the first book of poetry published by a person of African
descent in the English language, marking the beginning
of an African-American literary tradition” (p. 31).
e scant data on Wheatley’s biography shows that
there are key experiences such as the events that led
to Wheatley’s capture and the predicaments that the
child faced during the Middle Passage that remain to
be known. Another difficulty in the scholarship about
Wheatley is the lack of information on the interactions
that Wheatley had in her early career with her White
critics. Gates writes: “We had no transcript of the ex-
changes that occurred between Miss Wheatley and her
eighteen examiners” (p. 29). Gates gives a detailed list of
these critics, who included omas Hutchinson, who was
the governor of Massachuses between 1769 and 1774;
Andrew Oliver, a Harvard graduate and “the colony’s
lieutenant governor (and Hutchinson’s brother-in-law
through his wife’s sister)” (p. 8); the Reverend Mather
Byles, who was another Harvard graduate and a Tory
Loyalist; the poet and satirist Joseph Green; the Reverend
Samuel Cooper, who was a poet, Harvard graduate, and
minister nicknamed “the silver-tongued preacher” (pp.
10-11); James Bowdoin, who was “one of the principal
American exemplars of the Enlightenment” (p. 11); the
Reverend Samuel Mather, known as “one of the greatest
in New England” (p. 14); and many other White digni-
taries of Boston.
In order to understand the purpose of the examin-
ers’ meeting with Wheatley, one must read the essay
“e Day When America Decided at Blacks Were of
a Species at Could Create Literature” that Gates wrote
in e Journal of Blacks in Higher Education in Autumn
1994.[4] In that article, Gates asked a series of ques-
tions on the relations between the White leadership and
Wheatley in eighteenth-century America. Referring to
a meeting that 18 notable White men of Boston held in
the city’s courthouse in the spring of 1772 to give Wheat-
ley an “oral examination” about her work, Gates asked:
“Why had this august group been assembled? Why had
it seen fit to summon this young African girl, scarcely
18 years old, before it?” Gates later wondered: “Why
was the creative writing of the African of such impor-
tance to the eighteenth century’s debate over slavery?-
” (p. 51) Seeking to answer these questions, Gates sug-
gested that the White men’s aitude was a product of the
belief of both Americans and Europeans in the incapacity
of Africans to produce literature, an assumption which,
as Gates argued, was antithetical to the Cartesian tenets
of the Enlightenment movement which equated reason
to humanity (p. 51).
In e Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Gates takes his in-
quiry further by raising serious issues about the rela-
tionships between the White leadership in eighteenth-
century America and African-American literature. In an
aempt to understand the obstacles that Wheatley had to
overcome in America for being a Black woman intellec-
tual, Gates traces them to the racialist discourse which
surrounded her poetry on that meeting which was held
in Boston one aernoon in October 1772. Gates writes:
“e panel had been assembled to verify the authorship
of her poems and to answer a much larger question: was
a Negro capable of producing literature?” (p. 5). In
this gathering, Gates identifies an important moment in
African-American literature: “eir interrogation of this
witness, and her answers, would determine not only this
woman’s fate but the subsequent direction of the anti-
slavery movement, as well as the birth of what a later
commentator would call ’a new species of literature,’ the
literature wrien by slaves” (p. 7).
Later, Gates discusses the importance of Wheatley’s
experience by focusing on the arrival, life, and work of
the poet and how they were transformed for the bet-
ter and for the worse by the racist discourse of the En-
lightenment movement that inspired her American crit-
ics. Using both up-to-date and early sources, Gates re-
veals the strong impact of racism on how Wheatley’s
work has been interpreted from the eighteenth century
to the 1970s.
First, Gates describes the relations between Jeffer-
son and Wheatley as similar to those between a bi-
ased critic of African-American literature and a genuine
African-American writer. e interaction between the
two individuals was tainted by the subtle racism that
prevented Jefferson from acknowledging the merit of
Wheatley’s poems. Taking part in the racist tradition in
which philosophers of the Renaissance and of the En-
lightenment such as Francis Bacon, David Hume, Im-
manuel Kant, and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel mis-
represented Blacks as people who possessed no arts, sci-
2
ences, or feeling, Jefferson was prone to demean not only
Wheatley’s Poems but also the entire Black race. Gates
writes: “omas Jefferson had associated Africans with
apes: black males find white women more beautiful than
black women, Jefferson had argued, as ’uniformly as is
the preference of the Orangutan for the black woman
over his own species”’ (p. 26). Jefferson’s racism, Gates
suggests, resonated with the Elizabethan conception of
the Great Chain of Being, which excluded Black people
from the human family.[5]
Paradoxically, as Gates shows, unlike the European Enlightenment thinkers, Jefferson “has qualified praise for the African’s musical propensities” (p. 43). Gates refers to the passage in Notes on the State of Virginia where Jefferson described Blacks as being “more gener- ally gied than whites with accurate ears for tune and time” (p. 43). Another paradox Gates reveals is that Jef- ferson, who was clearly a racist philosopher, coinciden- tally became the first critic of African-American litera- ture. Gates describes a leer that Jefferson received from his French colleague Fran=ois, “the Marquis de Barb=- Marbois,” in which the author commended Wheatley for having published “a number of poems in which there is imagination, poetry, and zeal” (p. 42). As Gates points out, Jefferson was not pleased by such high appraisal and was quick to prove the contrary to the French critic. Gates explains: “As outlined in eries VI and XIV of the Notes, Jefferson lays out clearly his views. ’e compo- sitions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.’ e criticism comes in a passage seing out his views on the mental capacity of the various races of man. ’In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection,’ Jefferson writes about blacks” (p. 42).
Later, as Gates argues, Jefferson took a harsher tone towards Wheatley and Black people, saying: “Misery is oen the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. eir love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imag- ination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Weatley [sic]; but it could not produce a poet” (p. 44).
Having stated Jefferson’s racist positions, Gates then gave another perspective on the Founding Father. He writes: “He [Jefferson] believed that Africans have hu- man souls, they merely lack the intellectual endowments of other races. Like his contemporaries, he separated ’what we would call intelligence from the capacity for religious experience.’ is division allows for both the religious conversion of slaves, as well as for the perpetu-
Paradoxically, as Gates shows, unlike the European Enlightenment thinkers, Jefferson “has qualified praise for the African’s musical propensities” (p. 43). Gates refers to the passage in Notes on the State of Virginia where Jefferson described Blacks as being “more gener- ally gied than whites with accurate ears for tune and time” (p. 43). Another paradox Gates reveals is that Jef- ferson, who was clearly a racist philosopher, coinciden- tally became the first critic of African-American litera- ture. Gates describes a leer that Jefferson received from his French colleague Fran=ois, “the Marquis de Barb=- Marbois,” in which the author commended Wheatley for having published “a number of poems in which there is imagination, poetry, and zeal” (p. 42). As Gates points out, Jefferson was not pleased by such high appraisal and was quick to prove the contrary to the French critic. Gates explains: “As outlined in eries VI and XIV of the Notes, Jefferson lays out clearly his views. ’e compo- sitions published under her name are below the dignity of criticism.’ e criticism comes in a passage seing out his views on the mental capacity of the various races of man. ’In general, their existence appears to participate more of sensation than reflection,’ Jefferson writes about blacks” (p. 42).
Later, as Gates argues, Jefferson took a harsher tone towards Wheatley and Black people, saying: “Misery is oen the parent of the most affecting touches in poetry. Among the blacks is misery enough, God knows, but no poetry. Love is the peculiar oestrum of the poet. eir love is ardent, but it kindles the senses only, not the imag- ination. Religion, indeed, has produced a Phillis Weatley [sic]; but it could not produce a poet” (p. 44).
Having stated Jefferson’s racist positions, Gates then gave another perspective on the Founding Father. He writes: “He [Jefferson] believed that Africans have hu- man souls, they merely lack the intellectual endowments of other races. Like his contemporaries, he separated ’what we would call intelligence from the capacity for religious experience.’ is division allows for both the religious conversion of slaves, as well as for the perpetu-
H-Net Reviews
ation of the principle of black inferiority. Guilt, as well as the growing evidence that blacks are indeed Homo Sapi- ens, meant that Africans could no longer be regarded as brutes. So Jefferson accepted the souls and humanity of slaves, while still maintaining their inferiority. Phillis is, for Jefferson, an example of a product of religion, of mindless repetition and imitation, without being the product of intellect, of reflection. True art requires a sub- lime combination of feeling and reflection” (p. 44).
Gates’s argument that Jefferson’s racism belied his guilt-ridden conscience about Black humanity is perti- nent, because it sheds light on a major figure of Amer- ican history whose views on race are fraught with con- tradictions. Reading the 1964 edition of Notes on the State of Virginia, one can see that Jefferson’s dualism towards Blacks also stemmed from fear, since he was deeply con- vinced that the human beings he had enslaved would by virtue of their natural rights seek vengeance when op- portunity arose. Because he was afraid of alliance be- tween runaway slaves and the British army, Jefferson de- vised a code for the repatriation of slaves to Africa. He wrote: “[e] revised code further proposes to propor- tion crimes and punishments ... pardon and privilege of clergy are proposed to be abolished; but if the ver- dict be against the defendant, the court in their discre- tion may allow a new trial. No aainder to cause a cor- ruption of blood, or forfeiture of dower. Slaves guilty of offences punishable in others by labor, to be transported to Africa, or elsewhere, as the circumstances of the time admit, there to be continued in slavery. A rigorous regi- ment proposed for those condemned to labor.”[6]
As the above statement shows, Jefferson’s views on African-Americans did then have a transatlantic dimen- sion, since it anticipated the idea of return to Africa, which, from a non-racist perspective, was popular among nineteenth-century Black nationalists such as Martin Robinson Delany and Alexander Crummel. It would have been good for Gates to place Jefferson’s racism and Wheatley’s resistance in the crucial discourses about the connections between race and Africa in which African- American intellectuals have participated since slavery. In fact, Gates had the opportunity to do so in his analysis of Wheatley’s 1768 poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” e poem, which is quoted in Gates’s book, reads:
’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand at there’s a God, that there is a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “eir colour is a diabolic die,” Remember, Christians, Ne-
ation of the principle of black inferiority. Guilt, as well as the growing evidence that blacks are indeed Homo Sapi- ens, meant that Africans could no longer be regarded as brutes. So Jefferson accepted the souls and humanity of slaves, while still maintaining their inferiority. Phillis is, for Jefferson, an example of a product of religion, of mindless repetition and imitation, without being the product of intellect, of reflection. True art requires a sub- lime combination of feeling and reflection” (p. 44).
Gates’s argument that Jefferson’s racism belied his guilt-ridden conscience about Black humanity is perti- nent, because it sheds light on a major figure of Amer- ican history whose views on race are fraught with con- tradictions. Reading the 1964 edition of Notes on the State of Virginia, one can see that Jefferson’s dualism towards Blacks also stemmed from fear, since he was deeply con- vinced that the human beings he had enslaved would by virtue of their natural rights seek vengeance when op- portunity arose. Because he was afraid of alliance be- tween runaway slaves and the British army, Jefferson de- vised a code for the repatriation of slaves to Africa. He wrote: “[e] revised code further proposes to propor- tion crimes and punishments ... pardon and privilege of clergy are proposed to be abolished; but if the ver- dict be against the defendant, the court in their discre- tion may allow a new trial. No aainder to cause a cor- ruption of blood, or forfeiture of dower. Slaves guilty of offences punishable in others by labor, to be transported to Africa, or elsewhere, as the circumstances of the time admit, there to be continued in slavery. A rigorous regi- ment proposed for those condemned to labor.”[6]
As the above statement shows, Jefferson’s views on African-Americans did then have a transatlantic dimen- sion, since it anticipated the idea of return to Africa, which, from a non-racist perspective, was popular among nineteenth-century Black nationalists such as Martin Robinson Delany and Alexander Crummel. It would have been good for Gates to place Jefferson’s racism and Wheatley’s resistance in the crucial discourses about the connections between race and Africa in which African- American intellectuals have participated since slavery. In fact, Gates had the opportunity to do so in his analysis of Wheatley’s 1768 poem “On Being Brought from Africa to America.” e poem, which is quoted in Gates’s book, reads:
’Twas mercy brought me from my Pagan land, Taught my benighted soul to understand at there’s a God, that there is a Saviour too: Once I redemption neither sought nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful eye, “eir colour is a diabolic die,” Remember, Christians, Ne-
3
gros, black as Cain, May be refin’d, and join th’ angelic
train. (pp. 70-71)
In this poem Wheatley ambiguously calls Africa “my Pagan land” while she celebrates her Blackness and her Christian faith. As Gates shows, “On Being Brought” has unfortunately become “the most reviled poem in African- American literature” for the following reasons: “To speak in such glowing terms about the ’mercy’ manifested by the slave trade was not exactly going to endear Miss Wheatley to black power advocates in the 1960s” (p. 71). Gates’s rationale weakens the importance of “On Be- ing Brought” because the poem, which is fraught with contradictions in Wheatley’s relationship to Africa, can help us understand the poet’s views on the relations be- tween the Black Atlantic world and Africa. In this sense, the criticisms of Wheatley’s aitudes about race, which Gates summarizes and debunks in the second half of his book, are not meaningless, because they help us posi- tion a major Black intellectual in the current conversa- tion about the global significance of racial identity and social struggle. Frankly, one wonders why Gates seems to be irritated by twentieth-century Black critics such as Stephen Henderson, Addison Gayle, Jr., and Amiri Baraka, who he aacks for either re-enacting Jefferson’s indictment of Wheatley (p. 82) or for seeking “forms of black expression” or “cultural affirmation” in Wheatley’s work (pp. 74-84). Gates writes: “Too black to be taken se- riously by white critics of the eighteenth century, Wheat- ley was now considered too white to interest black critics of the twentieth. Precisely the sort of mastery of the liter- ary cra and themes that led to her vindication before the Boston town-hall tribunal was now summoned as proof that she was, culturally, an impostor.... As new cultural vanguards sought to police and patrol the boundaries of black art, Wheatley’s glorious carriage would become her tumbril” (p. 82).
Gates’s comment reflects conflictive views about race and national or cultural identity. It is unseling to know that Gates, who uses African iconography in his theorizing of African-American literature, is nonethe- less disturbed when critics try to do the same thing with Wheatley’s work. Referring to the critics of the Black Arts Movement, Gates writes: “We can almost imagine Wheatley being frog-marched through hall in the nineteen-sixties or seventies, surrounded by dashiki- clad, flowering figures of ’the Revolution’: ’What is Ogun’s Relation to Esu?’: ’Who are the sixteen principal deities in the Yoruba pantheon of Gods?’ ’Santeria de- rived from which African culture?’ And finally ’Where you gonna be when the revolution comes, sista?”’ (pp. 83-84). is statement reflects a condescension toward
In this poem Wheatley ambiguously calls Africa “my Pagan land” while she celebrates her Blackness and her Christian faith. As Gates shows, “On Being Brought” has unfortunately become “the most reviled poem in African- American literature” for the following reasons: “To speak in such glowing terms about the ’mercy’ manifested by the slave trade was not exactly going to endear Miss Wheatley to black power advocates in the 1960s” (p. 71). Gates’s rationale weakens the importance of “On Be- ing Brought” because the poem, which is fraught with contradictions in Wheatley’s relationship to Africa, can help us understand the poet’s views on the relations be- tween the Black Atlantic world and Africa. In this sense, the criticisms of Wheatley’s aitudes about race, which Gates summarizes and debunks in the second half of his book, are not meaningless, because they help us posi- tion a major Black intellectual in the current conversa- tion about the global significance of racial identity and social struggle. Frankly, one wonders why Gates seems to be irritated by twentieth-century Black critics such as Stephen Henderson, Addison Gayle, Jr., and Amiri Baraka, who he aacks for either re-enacting Jefferson’s indictment of Wheatley (p. 82) or for seeking “forms of black expression” or “cultural affirmation” in Wheatley’s work (pp. 74-84). Gates writes: “Too black to be taken se- riously by white critics of the eighteenth century, Wheat- ley was now considered too white to interest black critics of the twentieth. Precisely the sort of mastery of the liter- ary cra and themes that led to her vindication before the Boston town-hall tribunal was now summoned as proof that she was, culturally, an impostor.... As new cultural vanguards sought to police and patrol the boundaries of black art, Wheatley’s glorious carriage would become her tumbril” (p. 82).
Gates’s comment reflects conflictive views about race and national or cultural identity. It is unseling to know that Gates, who uses African iconography in his theorizing of African-American literature, is nonethe- less disturbed when critics try to do the same thing with Wheatley’s work. Referring to the critics of the Black Arts Movement, Gates writes: “We can almost imagine Wheatley being frog-marched through hall in the nineteen-sixties or seventies, surrounded by dashiki- clad, flowering figures of ’the Revolution’: ’What is Ogun’s Relation to Esu?’: ’Who are the sixteen principal deities in the Yoruba pantheon of Gods?’ ’Santeria de- rived from which African culture?’ And finally ’Where you gonna be when the revolution comes, sista?”’ (pp. 83-84). is statement reflects a condescension toward
H-Net Reviews
the same African culture that Gates celebrates in e Sig- nifying Monkey: A eory of Afro-American Literary Crit- icism (1988), where he traces “the black voice” in African- American literature to Esu Elegbera, the Yoruba trickster who has the power to create free-play and indetermi- nacy in the Black text. Esu received this power from a calabash that the High God Olorun [or Olodumare] in Yoruba mythology gave him.[7] If Gates is apprehen- sive about African-centric interpretations of Wheatley’s work, why does he end e Trials of Phillis Wheatley with an anagram-translated form of “On Being Brought” in which the narrator says:
Aren’t African men born to be free? So Am I. Ye com- mit so brute a crime On us. But we can change thy ai- tude. America, manumit our race. I thank the Lord. (p. 88)
e line “Aren’t African men born to be free?- ” is a Pan-Africanist statement that cannot be inter- preted without reference to the transnational dimensions of Wheatley’s cultural or political views on Blackness, Africa, and America. In this sense, as Gates points out at the end of his book, the question is not so much “to read white, or read black; it is to read” (p. 89). Yet a bal- anced reading of Wheatley’s poems must validate the au- thor’s ideas about Africa and Blackness as well as those she had about America and Whiteness. Re-interpreting Wheatley’s work requires analysis of the racist histori- cal contexts and myths that confronted the author. Yet it also requires a study of the role that home, racial iden- tity, resistance, and tradition, conceived both locally and transnationally, played in her life and work.
e Trials of Phillis Wheatley makes great contribu- tions to Black Atlantic Studies in its own ways by repre- senting Wheatley as an African slave who achieved rad- ical transformations in her status and in that of the en- tire African race through intellectual means. e most pleasurable moment in the book is when Gates writes: “Essentially, she [Wheatley] was auditioning for the hu- manity of the entire African people” (p. 27). Some fieen years aer she was brought to America as slave, Wheat- ley became the first Black writer to publish a poem, dis- mantling the racist view that Black people were not in- telligent or human. As Gates has convincingly shown in his book, Wheatley’s success has had a strong impact on American culture, notably on omas Jefferson’s views on race and African-American literature and on the tra- dition of minimizing Wheatley’s work that it has engen- dered. However, though it is warranted, Gates’s critique of Jefferson’s legacy in Black literary criticism is prob- lematic because it centers mainly on the critics of the
the same African culture that Gates celebrates in e Sig- nifying Monkey: A eory of Afro-American Literary Crit- icism (1988), where he traces “the black voice” in African- American literature to Esu Elegbera, the Yoruba trickster who has the power to create free-play and indetermi- nacy in the Black text. Esu received this power from a calabash that the High God Olorun [or Olodumare] in Yoruba mythology gave him.[7] If Gates is apprehen- sive about African-centric interpretations of Wheatley’s work, why does he end e Trials of Phillis Wheatley with an anagram-translated form of “On Being Brought” in which the narrator says:
Aren’t African men born to be free? So Am I. Ye com- mit so brute a crime On us. But we can change thy ai- tude. America, manumit our race. I thank the Lord. (p. 88)
e line “Aren’t African men born to be free?- ” is a Pan-Africanist statement that cannot be inter- preted without reference to the transnational dimensions of Wheatley’s cultural or political views on Blackness, Africa, and America. In this sense, as Gates points out at the end of his book, the question is not so much “to read white, or read black; it is to read” (p. 89). Yet a bal- anced reading of Wheatley’s poems must validate the au- thor’s ideas about Africa and Blackness as well as those she had about America and Whiteness. Re-interpreting Wheatley’s work requires analysis of the racist histori- cal contexts and myths that confronted the author. Yet it also requires a study of the role that home, racial iden- tity, resistance, and tradition, conceived both locally and transnationally, played in her life and work.
e Trials of Phillis Wheatley makes great contribu- tions to Black Atlantic Studies in its own ways by repre- senting Wheatley as an African slave who achieved rad- ical transformations in her status and in that of the en- tire African race through intellectual means. e most pleasurable moment in the book is when Gates writes: “Essentially, she [Wheatley] was auditioning for the hu- manity of the entire African people” (p. 27). Some fieen years aer she was brought to America as slave, Wheat- ley became the first Black writer to publish a poem, dis- mantling the racist view that Black people were not in- telligent or human. As Gates has convincingly shown in his book, Wheatley’s success has had a strong impact on American culture, notably on omas Jefferson’s views on race and African-American literature and on the tra- dition of minimizing Wheatley’s work that it has engen- dered. However, though it is warranted, Gates’s critique of Jefferson’s legacy in Black literary criticism is prob- lematic because it centers mainly on the critics of the
4
Black Arts Movement who rightfully seek racial and/or
cultural affirmation and authenticity in Wheatley’s po-
ems. ese critics were simply trying to place Wheatley’s
work in the global history of the struggle and survival of
Black people and cultures.
Notes
[1]. Paul Gilroy, e Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 3.
[2]. Paul Gilroy, “Cultural Studies and Ethnic Abso- lutism,” in Lawrence Greenberg, et al., eds., Cultural Stud- ies (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 193.
[3]. Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 1.
[4]. In the preface to e Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Gates says that his book “is an expanded version of the omas Jefferson Lecture in Humanities” that he deliv- ered at the Library of Congress in March 2002 (p. 1). While this is accurate, some of the arguments that Gates
Notes
[1]. Paul Gilroy, e Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 3.
[2]. Paul Gilroy, “Cultural Studies and Ethnic Abso- lutism,” in Lawrence Greenberg, et al., eds., Cultural Stud- ies (London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p. 193.
[3]. Paul E. Lovejoy, ed., Identity in the Shadow of Slavery (London and New York: Continuum, 2000), p. 1.
[4]. In the preface to e Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Gates says that his book “is an expanded version of the omas Jefferson Lecture in Humanities” that he deliv- ered at the Library of Congress in March 2002 (p. 1). While this is accurate, some of the arguments that Gates
H-Net Reviews
develops in the book have their roots in the early essay. See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “e Day When America De- cided at Blacks Were of a Species at Could Create Literature,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 5 (Au- tumn 1994): pp. 50-51.
[5]. See Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: Amer- ican Aitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Williamsburg: e University of North Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 219- 220; Arthur P. Lovejoy, e Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 58-60.
[6]. omas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 139.
[7]. In e Signifying Monkey, Gates describes Esu Elegbera as the messenger of the Yoruba god Ifa. Esu has a calabash given to him by Olorun, the god’s emissary. e Calabash has the power to propagate itself (p. 8). e calabash also has the “ASE,” the element with which Olodumare, the supreme deity created the universe (p. 7).
develops in the book have their roots in the early essay. See Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “e Day When America De- cided at Blacks Were of a Species at Could Create Literature,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 5 (Au- tumn 1994): pp. 50-51.
[5]. See Winthrop D. Jordan, White over Black: Amer- ican Aitudes toward the Negro, 1550-1812 (Williamsburg: e University of North Carolina Press, 1968), pp. 219- 220; Arthur P. Lovejoy, e Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 58-60.
[6]. omas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 139.
[7]. In e Signifying Monkey, Gates describes Esu Elegbera as the messenger of the Yoruba god Ifa. Esu has a calabash given to him by Olorun, the god’s emissary. e Calabash has the power to propagate itself (p. 8). e calabash also has the “ASE,” the element with which Olodumare, the supreme deity created the universe (p. 7).
If there is additional discussion of this review, you may access it through the list discussion logs at:
hp://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl.
Citation: Babacar M’Baye. Review of Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., e Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers. H-USA, H-Net Reviews. April, 2004.
URL: hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9210
Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate aribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
Citation: Babacar M’Baye. Review of Gates, Henry Louis, Jr., e Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers. H-USA, H-Net Reviews. April, 2004.
URL: hp://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=9210
Copyright © 2004 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate aribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooks@mail.h-net.msu.edu.
