The Origins of African American Poetry

According to Henry Louis Gates, Jr., “The birth of the AfroAmerican literary tradition occurred in 1773, when Phillis Wheatley published a book of poetry.”1 It is widely accepted that the African American poetry tradition starts with Wheatley (c. 1753–84). Kidnapped from her birthplace in Gambia, West Africa, and sold into slavery as a child of only six or seven, Wheatley is an unusual case of a “slave” whose education, companionship, and prestige as a literary prodigy were of paramount importance to the Wheatley family who “purchased” her. Wheatley’s volume Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, published in London, is regarded as the first poetry collection to be published by an African American. Many anthologies and books on the history of African American poetry start with the poems of Wheatley, who was manumitted by her owner, John Wheatley, in the same year that her only poetry collection was published.2 During her sadly brief lifetime, Wheatley was famous both nationally and internationally for her extraordinary