Phillis Wheatley

I was born in Africa, torn from my people and sold into bondage at seven. The ship that bore me was called Phyllis, so they gave me its name. I was frail, sickly, and sold in Boston for a pittance. But God in his mystery, gave me the gift of language, and with it I made a world. I was enslaved and educated in the household of prominent Boston commercialist John Wheatley. The Wheatley family taught me to read. Within 16 months, I devoured the Bible, Milton, Virgil, and Pope. While still enslaved, I began to write verse, elegies, odes and sacred songs. I wrote in every human breast. God has implanted a principle which we call love of freedom. It is impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance. I published over 100 poems in my lifetime, though many are now lost. In 1773, I became the first African woman to publish a book of poetry. I praised liberty, celebrated Columbia's cause, and sent verses to General Washington himself. In 1778, I married John Peters. A free black man with fine ambitions was crushed by a world that offered him no purchase. Debts landed him in prison. I was left alone, sick and poor. I died in 1784, not yet 32, still writing, still believing I was born enslaved. But I claimed my place with a pen. If freedom was the song of the revolution, I added my voice soft, insistent and unforgotten.