Massachusetts Historical Society | Bringing Phillis to Life

Yesterday — Monday, October 30, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. — I watched the three-expert panel Bringing Phillis to Life hosted by Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) at their headquarters in Boston and streamed via Zoom. The talk focused on the life and work of Phillis Wheatley, a colonial American poet who was the third woman, first Black person, a first enslaved person in British North America to publish a book of poetry, called Poems on Various Subjects Religious and Moral. Each speaker presented for about ten minutes, followed by a twenty minute Q&A.

Dr. Tara Bynum, professor at University of Iowa, recently published the book Reading Pleasures: Everyday Black Living in Early America. She spoke in a lyrical style describing surviving letters between Wheatley and her friend, Obour Tanner, another formerly enslaved Black woman who lived in Newport, RI. The letters were written between 1772 and 1779, and they are currently held by MHS, and the story of how they got there was remarkable in itself. Wheatley was an international celebrity at the time of writing the letters and well-remembered after her death in 1784. Tanner received much of Wheatley’s “handwritten stuff”, according to Dr. Bynum, which included books and letters. Many years later, Tanner was a member of the First Congregational Church in Newport. Her pastor was young William Beecher, brother of author Harriet Beecher Stowe. Tanner allowed Katherine Edes Beecher, the twenty-something wife of her pastor, to keep eight of the letters. This preserved collection was given to MHS.

Dr. David Waldstreicher, author of the scholarly biography The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, noted that Wheatley did not leave as much written documentation on her life as many other famous people. She did not keep a diary or have many surviving records. Because of this ambiguity about her life, many plays and young adult biographies exist to fill in the gaps. A famous “dramatic scene” presented by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. (known for the PBS show Finding Your Roots) has been called the “Trial of Phillis Wheatley”. This fictional account imagined Wheatley being examined by famous Bostonian White men before they signed an attestation that appears at the front of her book confirming that she wrote the poems herself. This event never happened, as Wheatley was already famous by the time she published her first book. Among Wheatley’s most famous poems was “To the Right Honourable William, Earl of Dartmouth”, where she deftly blended religion, politics, and daily life while comparing the protests of American colonies on their mistreatment under British rule to her own mistreatment as an enslaved person. According to legend, Wheatley wrote the fifty-line poem in a single night, although Dr. Waldstreicher believed she worked from notes or a rough draft after receiving the request from British businessman Thomas Woolridge.

Ade Solanke, British-Nigerian playwright who wrote the twin plays Phillis in Boston and Phillis in London on Wheatley’s travels and work around the time of the American Revolution. She described how strove to “remember, reimagine, and bring to life the lives of enslaved people” during her ten-year project of writing her plays. Solanke grew up in Notting Hill, London, English, an area well-known for its diverse population, and she used Wheatley’s story to understand her own experience as part of the Black Diaspora, especially when living in Los Angeles as a writer. As a character, Wheatley’s story is a rare instance when an African woman is the center of the story. Her travels connected the three parts of the Black Atlantic: Africa, where she was born; the Americas, where she was enslaved; and Europe, where she published her work.

During the Q&A, all three panelists elaborated on their work. My favorite answer was when Solanke described the similarities between writing a play and her previous job as a journalist for the BBC, BBC Radio, and The Guardian. She stated that “Journalism is the literature of fact”, and there is “no such thing as a true story… distort is another word for shaping”. While journalists stick to known information, they must leave out some facts and emphasize others to create a storyline for an article. Similarly, while writing her plays, Solanke researched other famous people in London during the time period and allowed them to “meet” Wheatley, including the women’s literary club, the Blue Stocking Society; Black British writer and composer Ignatius Sancho; and young William Wilberforce, a future English politician who would lead the British abolitionist movement.

This was my first time watching an in-person panel hosted by MHS, and I was impressed by the knowledge of the panelists and the timing of the presentations. While I knew much about Wheatley before the talk, I learned further details from their discussion. All three speakers were clearly experts and spoke with enthusiasm using language that was easy to understand. When I occasionally missed a word or phase, I could read the automatically generated transcript in Zoom. I enjoyed the presentation and look forward to future events hosted by MHS.