Transcripts For CSPAN3 David 20240703

David walt stryker teaches history at the City University of new york Graduate Center and is the author of slaverys constitution from revolution to ratification and runaway america. Benjamin franklin slavery and the American Revolution. He has written for the New York Times book review, Boston Review and the atlantic, among other publications. And he is joined in conversation by annette gordonreed professor at harvard university. She has won the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book award, and she is the author of six books. Her honors include fellowships from the guggenheim and macarthur foundations and the National Humanities medal. She shes a fellow of the American Academy of arts and sciences, the American Philosophical Society and the british academy. Tonight, they are here to discuss the odyssey of Phillis Wheatley, a poets journeys through american slavery and independ. Since this new biography is the fullest account to date of wheatleys life and works and carrie greenidge writes in the New York Times book review that the odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is at once historical biography at its best literary analysis, at its sharpest and a subversive indictment of current political discourse, questioning the relevance of black life in our countrys history. While australias major contribution as a scholar is to take seriously the alternate reality that enslaved people like wheatley created outside the white gaze, where so excited to host this event here at harvard bookstore. Please join me in welcoming david wilde and annette gordonreed. Well, thank you very much for that introduction and thank everybody for coming out to listen to us talk about this. This is a great book. David, to start off, i want to say youre historian of the American Revolution, the early american republic. You have written a book about benjamin franklin. What made you decide to write about Phillis Wheatley. Well, to me, it really wasnt a great leap because i did have a paragraph or two about her in my book about celebrations and politics in the early republic and and a bit and a bit. Thank you. And a bit on in my book on franklin wheatley has a very important interaction with franklin in london. So ive been thinking about aspects of her that were underappreciated. And i also wanted to write a book about slavery and the revolution that was had more black people in it than my previous ones. So, so there was that. But its also for me a return to some of my interests in, in literary studies, which i were important to me in an earlier time. And it was a pleasure to have an excuse to return to that as well. So this is very different from your other kinds of books, right . And youre doing Different Things that i didnt know that you had a background in literary studies. This is the american studies, major. Is that youre counting that or actual classes this was something that you had thought about maybe doing seriously. I, i was i was an english major as well as a history major at the university of virginia. And then i did my ph. D. In american studies, and i was very interested in print culture, and i became a cultural historian as well as a political historian. And i think thats what im known for as well as for studying the period and and being interested in slavery and antislavery, but to me, i was never not doing literary stuff. Ive always been interested in rhetoric. Ive always been interested in language. So i didnt experience this as as much of a departure as as i as perhaps the few the people read my stuff may find. So theres no selfconscious sense about doing literary criticism, literary analysis of her work, because thats what i mean. Its a biography. But you talk about her, a poet poems and you make judgments about them and you well, you analyze it. No, i. I didnt feel it was doing something radically different or that i that i hadnt done before, though i didnt know how to make it. It took a long time to make this book and i didnt know it could be a book until i was certain that i could consistently talk about her poems as actions and as evidence for what she is thinking and doing, and to build a story around them. So i dont i dont it is a its certainly a literary biography and comparable to others. Im sure. But its. I didnt think that i was doing something radically different from what i did say with franklin or how did you plan this . What was your strategy for doing it . You said you didnt know that you had a book until you got to a particular point. Did what was it . Just reading her poetry. Did you start out doing that or just reading about her . How did you get how did you get started with this and develop a method for ferreting out material and figuring out what it is you were actually going to say or you wanted to say . Well, i did. I did feel that nobody had examined her with in the context of the politics of slavery in the American Revolution and knowing what i and we know about that and thinking of her as responsive to that in more than just one or two poems. So i had a i had a hook. I had somewhere i wanted to get. But the question was how to where to begin the story . How did she become that . And so i wrote i wrote a few essays about that and, and published them and gave talks, but i wasnt sure how to make it a a story or know where to begin. There were really two things that had to happen. First one was that i really had to ground myself in two fields that i had no background in. Unlike literary studies, i really had no background in greek and roman classical and very little, very little in west african history, except insofar as it touched on an africanamerican history and i that those because at a certain point, i realized how important homer and other greek and roman classics in translation were to her, and that that also wasnt underplayed, underappreciated theme in her life and work. I realized i needed to Read Everything she read and really understand it. And so that that for both doing both those things took years. But they also helped me really write the first couple of chapters and begin it. Then after that i started reading the newspaper in a very intensive way, and that became the method really thinking of her as responsive to whats going on in boston, really looking at every page of every boston newspaper and thinking about what. What does this tell us about about people in boston . What is it . Tell us about slavery in boston . What what are what are and what are africanamericans doing . And what is she . What is she . What are people saying . What is she responding to in the coming of the colonial controversy, but also in relation to other more everyday things as well . And then that that really became the the grounding of it in a in in the sense of carrying the story and thinking about why shes developing as a poet and writing certain kinds of poems for certain kinds of audiences over time. And so then that that was really the thing that made it, i think, really hold together and be as hopefully as, as rich and also as, as kind of really seeing her poems as not just something that happened in a kind of vague revolutionary era or boston in the 1760s or 1770s, but actually, no, she wrote she writes this poem. Shes doing this thing in 1767 because of other things that are going on. And she is a political poet in that sense, but also a person really reading the newspaper and listening to whats going on and responsive to a lot of different types of people in different constituencies. And that thats thats part of her brilliance, is to be that responsive. Did you suspect that or is that something that you discovered . I mean, you you said you used the term intensive going through newspapers. Spell that out. How many newspapers . Well, jenny schussler, the times actually asked me to count them, so i. I did a sort of i reconstructed how many issues and how many pages those issues had. So it would be it would be Something Like 50,000 pages somewhere in that in that vicinity. But to me, this wasnt a big deal because newspapers have been central to my research. Yeah. Any other in other projects, if anything, i actually put it off for really doing that for years because i was afraid that i was going to be unsigned, typically applying this old Research Method that i was what i was good at to this different kind of project that i was afraid of. I was afraid of that bias and that what i was doing. So i actually should have i would have gotten to this point sooner if i had dont realize that that was really what i wanted to do all along. Yeah, thats interesting that you should say that because i think about Phillis Wheatley it it isnt a very sort of a very enclosed picture. I mean, shes just sort of writing poems to George Washington and other people. And i dont think of her. I didnt until i saw this think about her as a person of action, a person who has a network that people the people shes talking to, the things shes doing, the very static presentation. And i think you do a very good job of making her seem like making her a real person, that she was a human being and was responding to all these things. And thats thats where her art comes from. The kinds of stuff thats going on around her speaking in washington. She is very often as so often happens, connected to two important members of the founding generation, washington and jefferson. Talk a little bit about that open ended question. But yeah, tell us about the two things. Right. Maybe its because i have been spending a lot of time in the pre 1776 part of the revolutionary year in recent years. I think of it as really for people that shes connected to and that always was this. Franklin and theres a speech, so its lord dartmouth. Franklin and to jefferson and washington. Dartmouth is not an american figure, so im just talking. Go ahead. So but her interaction with lord dartmouth actually sets the stage. Yeah, of course, for the other ones. And. She has an understanding that that if you can get the attention of these famous men, it really can be transformative. And so its lord dartmouth, its writing, too, and a poem about lord dartmouth that gets her to england. Its interacting with franklin and then later claiming later in her proposal for a second book, claiming his approval, dedicating it to him that is another bid for patronage and recognition. And that shes based, that shes constructing herself as someone who is an equivalent of these transatlantic famous guys and who is has something to say about political matters with what washington is perhaps the most important, but also the most revealing, because shes not the hes not the only general that she writes to and about. She writes to she writes to. She writes one for general leigh that that was not published in her lifetime and that gets buried because everything falls apart. And thats part of what shes writing about, actually, with charles lee, that that hes been captured. And but she doesnt know that hes really famous and a big deal. And Everybody Loves him. Thats what she knows because shes been observing that happen. New england, they love charles lee. Theres a and she writes she writes to other military figures. And so that is a successful strategy to her and for her and really part of and shes used to it well. She knows that british poets have been doing this and she knows that that homer and other and others have always written to and about these great men, especially men of battle. And that that is part of what poetry was expected to do. And its one of the most ambitious things that one can do as a poet. And all this sets up jeffersons response to her, which is to say, no, shes not doing that. No, this isnt that important. It isnt. It doesnt go in and it maybe it doesnt even go in an antislavery direction, which in other context, hes willing to admit that we should go in. But. That is really all of this is the background that we need to understand why its so important for jefferson to really engage in what i sometimes think of. I dont know if i did i use this phrase a cocktail. Ive used it a Cocktail Party. This. Of oh, he says, oh, oh, the her poems are not, you know, theyre not what they seem to be like. Theyre, theyre really theyre really nothing. Im sure he tried this. I think of it as a Cocktail Party thing because i actually think he must have tried it out in conversation and got to laugh at it and then it actually ends up right there, right in the middle of notes on the state of virginia to sort of keep it bay. The the threat that her fame actually represents. And the threat is not the threat is not so much to really that it will threaten slavery. Actually, the threat is that it makes americans look bad because they havent celebrated her or they havent that its shes been used to embarrass the american cause. And thats what hes primarily concerned about. And that thats not the way its thats a different take. Yes. For you different take on i dont know yet whether it flies, but well see. But waiting im waiting to hear what you to your friends who are in the room will say about all of this. Its its out of american chauvinist ism. Thats thats driving it more than just i dont believe that people of african descent we believe that. But that thats a secondary thing compared to the threat that she poses to peoples image, to americas image. Right. This but its but as you know well, it sends him in the direction of saying no people no this actually people of african descent are not really doing what theyre obviously doing. And so the reason he has to go on and on about that is because other people are saying, yes, they are. Yes, they know this is a tremendous significance. And, you know, and she knows all that. I mean, all this happens after after shes gone. Jefferson publishes and she doesnt she doesnt get to actually see this because its, you know, its after her death. How would you characterize her image . Wheatleys image over the the years . Because you sort of evolve here in the way people view or not just white people, but black people as well. Women in part of it, you have people like dubois that you mentioned and others who arent thrilled with her. Other members of the black Arts Movement dont adopt her as a part of their understanding of black esthetic. What is her . What is her image . What has it been. Well, theres theres been some good scholarship on this that im that im building on recently. But i dont i think that were still in this space where we cant really be were still amazed that she did what she did. And cant really conceive of the extent of her fame during her lifetime and how significant that was. And also how important that was to the Abolitionist Movement in her time. And then and then for a long time afterwards. And thats what jefferson is really responding to. So theres really the last chapter of the book is about this and frankly, i thought it would be more of the book when i my original plan was and its such a fascinating story, how people have continued to respond to her. I call it her afterlives, but so im starting at the beginning and im going to get to the message i was asking. So really, secretary, really, really. What you have is black and white abolitionists in the early republic keeping her memory alive. Shes shes they are they republish her poems in William Lloyd garrisons liberator, both black and white antislavery people use her as an example or they teach her they use they use her poems in schools so people know who she is. But what you see is a backlash against that. That happens that you can already see starting to happen with jefferson and then in the in the in the early republic and of really building by the time you get to the late 19 century but so what and what eventually happens in the jim crow reconstruction and jim crow era is africanamericans keep her memory alive. She continues to be an example of achievement. And so much so, shes so important. And we still see the schools named after Phillis Wheatley other Phillis Wheatley clubs in the in the late 19th, early 20th century. And shes held up as what i sometimes what you might call a poster child for literacy and a famous first and especially for women that and when you combine that with the way styles of poetry change eventually theres a backlash to that and and and some africanamerican critics and writers like Jay Saunders Redding and James Weldon Johnson and dubois in his earlier years, who not later on. I dont know ive been wondering if is what what turns him but you start to see it by the forties actually, and then eventually and then eventually of course. I mean is it is it Shirley Graham who. Yeah. Turns them because eventually she writes this wonderful young adult book about him. So eventually you start to see a kind of a two sided figure. She still celebrated by some by some folks, especially women. But a lot a lot of black artists are see her as a negative example. Shes not race conscious enough. Shes not as inyourface as shed like to be her. And so theres been this continual tendency to call her, to call her an uncle tom or to call her or to say that shes really a negative a negative example. And so that then but then theres a push back to that starting in the seventies by by by black feminist critics and writers who reclaim her and Henry Louis Gates wrote eloquently about that. And were still in a kind of were still in that moment where its starting, i think, to turn in the is definitely in the recent criticism, much more of an appreciation that she really was a genius and doing something very creative and innovative for for her time. But its been a real one of the things ive wondered is is is really this there may be folks who, you know, dont want to hear what i have to say about what shes what she was doing, perhaps why . Well. I understand the basis of the people in the black Arts Movement who are looking for a black esthetic. And so her championing of of classical greek the traditions being in thrall to that would make her part of a eurocentric world. I see why they would be opposed to that. What would be is that the same concern we have now that that people have now that its to its to well, eurocentric and her and her and shes sort of adopting the the mores and the values of the people who were enslaving her at this point, i think it turns on a question of it turns on how one sees a kind of universe realism that thats very skeptical about race. And thats how i to be, i guess, to be as direct about it as i can. I see her as using the masters tools or and using the religious culture and the literary cultures and the political culture of the time, and turning it in a direction that is not a rejection of her fellow africans or eventually really of africa at all. But it is a claim to belonging to. Its a claim to a british and an american identity and a claim to equality and a claim to a real skepticism of what she is experiencing as the rising racism of the time in the way race is being used to divide people and as an excuse not not to not to liberate africans. So i think that it helps to understand the politics and what shes responding to. But at the end of the day, shes shes a shes a deconstruct her of race and not a celebrant of of a black esthetic or a black eye or a black identity and that that may that may not be useful for for everyone at this or any moment for so. Yeah, well, yeah. So its still about identity. Its about her understanding of identity. Didnt appeal to people in the black Arts Movement and today where identity is still is very important that still a challenge that she might be a challenge to them but she has a very i think i do think that she has a very understanding of what how identity works and how ones presentation of ones identity is going to be contingent on who one is speaking to and with at any moment. So i think she is code switching. She appreciates that she has different audiences and we have to be open to the distinct possibility that what we get from Phillis Wheatley is a and we can see it in the difference, for example, between her letters to over tanner and the poems and, and her and some of her letters where its clear that shes evolving and changing. But its also clear that she says different like that, like, like most people and especially Public People and politically active people. Shes saying Different Things to different people. So we have to be so im telling her biography through what through and is a public biography in the literary biography. And i talk as much as i can about what shes thinking and feeling, but i do im i do think that there is there are whole sides of Phillis Wheatley that i dont know and that ill never know and that that is part of the story and that i try to write about her in a way that suggests that that is that that that we that we need to consider, that we need to consider that and not reduce her to not say not expect even though shes talking about herself and shes asked to talk about herself, shes required to talk about herself. Thats what people want from her. But and that im not saying that shes not a christian or that she doesnt believe what shes saying, but that nevertheless, yes, shes not. We have to be open to the possibility that, oh, she remembered plenty about africa, but nobody wants to hear it in her poetry. Thats not what her audience wants to hear. And thats a distinct possibility. So to judge her, for it to say that her consciousness is what she publishes, it seems to me to be not a fair assumption, especially given how obviously smart and careful she is. Well, its an amazing what. Was it . Its an amazing situation to think of a person being it to come from where she came and then to be in the position shes in and addressing all of these people. And i love the idea of her writing Different Things to different people because youre right, shes very selfconsciously. Shes understands who the audience is. And to have to maneuver in that world in a way that preserved yourself, that allowed you to do the kinds of things she did. It would be tremendously, i would think, pressure filled in a lot of ways. And it shows real ingenuity and. Now, its it shows her as a as a complex person, which is i was saying before earlier on, its not something that i had a chance to unpack because i just thought, oh, you know, the enslaved girl who writes poetry and dies tragically later or whatever, it was a very limited sense of who she is. But this really brings brings out her her personality. I think her her struggle, because i think it would be to struggle to be in that kind of those kinds of circumstances. And she uses complexes as as jefferson always in washington, as all people are different people in different audiences. Did that surprise you or did you suspect that . I it the question was, is, can i can i bring this out . Can i explain what she did and why . And the choices she made and with the limitations of of the of the of the documents and whats going to be the place for the probably and the perhaps is speculation as as and hemingses of monticello was a model in this respect for me. But many scholars since and that wrote are trying to write books like this where with. We historians think of it as the problem of the archives particularly how it silences black women in ways that are that seem to be as it seems to have been and especially intense and need to be unpack it and you have to tell a story about while youre telling the story. You have to also explain why it is we we what we know, what we cant know. And of. But the historian and biographer, his job is still to try to make that a story without it having to be just about what we dont know. Yeah. What we and what and what well never know. And so that was the thing that the question was, can i do this in way that is really up to the mark of what others have been doing. Like yourself and that, that, that was, that was to me the real, the real the challenge of it and the the the open question why i think people are so interested in knowing about the people who are unknown. We dont have the archive as full as you do with more famous people that as long as youre honest with people about what youre doing, about what you know and what you dont know, as long as you put it there, they go along with you. You they say, i dont accept that or i do accept it, but its, its the honesty about it as opposed to sometimes even people have lots of information making pronouncements that are not right, declarative sentences that are more certain than they actually should be. So even when you have a lot of information. So i think it really is about the honesty that the writer has and shows and the respect that you show to the audience in presenting this material. Because Everybody Knows we dont have as much information about enslaved people or wheatley as you would like to have, but what do you have . What can we think about . How can we think her life as and as you know well, from writing about jefferson, theres so we i guess we share this experience now of writing writing about people who theres no lack of. Theres very little and theres no lack of documentation. I had it with writing about franklin. Theres a and theres a way in which biographers, especially sometimes when they have a plentitude of material, its very easy to sort of say, okay, i know x and y and thus obviously z must be true to because somebody because one because one biographer said it once and then you just sort of forget the fact that, well, other biographers have actually not said that for good reason, because it was it was an extrapolation doesnt make any sense. It doesnt make any sense. And but it just sort of got repeated again and again. So there are there are dangers. There are dangers. Theres plenty of material to are really the same the same problem. Whats the most important thing that you learned about her. Oh, im sure there are more than one thing, but something that you think, wow, this is great. I cant wait to tell people this. Oh, theres so much. Theres so much there. Im my favorite thing or the most important thing. But do you a favorite thing and the most important thing. My my favorite thing is kind of wonky or academic. I mean, is this the best time, the sheer pleasure of reading things that people that we dont read anymore and that arent well known and realizing that she must have read them like, oh, ill go, ill go with the wackiest because it came late so its still on my mind. So theres this, theres this guy, this guy, hes a lord of the lord lyttleton george lyttleton, major figure, political figure, literary figure, patron of writers, poet, historian. Very well known from the 1733 young friend of Alexander Pope in the 1730s, he and he he was friends with a lot of the innovative of british women writers and he did all these things he james thompson, henry fielding, he wrote he wrote a lot. Hes very well known hes so well known that he has a nickname as may sense. I dont know. I may be pronouncing that. Okay. Okay. When wheatley writes her writes her book, the first poem in it, which has been puzzle, is to make sense. And its a poem about its about a patron. Horace wrote poems to make sent us other roman writers wrote like its a poem about ones relationship with ones patron. So wheatley scholars, we asked again, again, whos marcellus . Is it . Susanna wheatley . Is it mather biles, who may have inspired her, who was a very wellknown poet and a minister, and who may have helped her out and is a who . So who is this . Is it imaginary relationship to another poet . Who is this . Well, it turns out that shes riffing on on some of littletons poems and that why is she doing that . Well, one of the first people she meets and she says thats in a letter when she when she goes over to london to get the book published is lord littleton. The problem is lord littleton then dies two weeks later. Oh, god. So and theres a notice in a newspaper that says it says that she that she was that she met lord littleton and that hes going to endorse the bible. It turns like every poet at the time, like you always try to get a blurb from lord littleton in the 1756. This is like Everybody Knows this, everybody does this. And so she knows exactly what shes doing, but nobody reads lord littleton anymore. Nobodys noticed that shes directly ripping on on a on a poem that on littletons poem that he wrote to pope as his patron. So its an example of how knowing she is and how well read she is and how up to date she is. And that so that this this strategy of high ambitions hating poet and how ambitious he is. So the strategy of imitating pope is not like, oh, she had Old Fashioned tastes that are already going out of style in the 1770s. Its like, no, she does exactly what shes doing. And this is a winning strategy. Its just we havent read the stuff that shes read and realized that shes not just imitating, but shes actually creatively riffing on it so that im like, i go, ive gone on too long about lord littleton, but thats all but the same is true for like, i mean, the light bulb moment for me really was i was listening to the odyssey in a in on books, on tape. Commuting, driving along distances. And in this old card, ive got these old cassette tapes that i picked up. I picked up at a book sale and for 0. 50. And ive got im listening to this wonderful modern translation by robert pagels. And im realizing that even though theyre not referred to as slaves, that slaves are all over the odyssey and whip and the traffic in women is all over, its all over it. All over the iliad and the odyssey. And theres war and theres voyages and that this is really if that she would have seen something very familiar that she experienced firsthand and and knew about that this that her 18th century Atlantic World and African World is translated to bull and and can and that she can riff on this stuff. She can think about it as and in a that that is actually maybe a lot more familiar to her and that it makes sense to use this stuff and she maybe she can even talk about things that she cant talk about directly. No one is asking Phillis Wheatley to write a slave narrative, but she can write poems that have a relationship to this literature and and refer to them and like. Yes, shes also doing a parallel thing with evangelical culture, but shes doing something with the secular literature that people can understand and that they can hear. And that create this opening. So that that that was really thats thats thats maybe the most important thing. And whats surprising to me, not as surprising to me years later, but i continue to be surprised. I would continue to be surprised picking up the newspaper and realizing that shes probably reading the same things and turns of phrase and events that she is responding to. So she is not. Unconcerned about the problem of slavery and the situation of africans. And this is something that she was aware of. Shes aware of it, and shes dealing with it directly and indirectly. And ultimately, i guess i realize that since ive been arguing for some time that the way that we need to stop thinking about slavery is something that was super great from the politics of the late 18th century, but rather was connected to it in a lot of complicated ways. I started to realize that she is doing Something Like that, that she is seeing connections that we no longer see because we expect people to either be talking about slavery or to be clueless, or either in denial or clueless or repressing knowledge of it. But rather, theres a much more gray area and much, many more connections are being drawn and argued about in subtle and subtle ways. So thats a misconception. Its a myth conception about her that you feel that you did. You set out to correct that or did you discover that after you went through all the tapes of the odyssey and other things, is it something that you dawned on dawn or you said, wait a minute, this this person, we thought that she was like this and that she was ignoring this. But in fact, you know, i can see this here in her work. It was it was it gradual . I knew i knew that i wanted to i knew that eventually i wanted to get to these famous poems where shes talking about africa and shes talking directly about slavery. I knew that she was growing into this more direct approach, but i guess i was. It was surprising how often she is riffing off of her experience and things that mattered to her and that that had the potential to change her life, which include her her religious faith and include things that are going on in boston that are political but not ness, but not necessarily something that she can make a direct, direct statement about slavery in relation to. But eventually, eventually she can. So so in the in the long run, i do think that i was able to make the argument that she is part of this process. She makes it so with other african eyes and and and creoles makes it impossible not to be impossible to ignore these connection between the politics of slavery and all the other politics of the thats going on with the American Revolution. And shes in contact with these people with people shes in contact with people who are who are making those connections and dealing with these dealing with these issues. So would that be the most important takeaway from this . What is it when you finished the book and youre looking at it and you think, what is it that you really want people to bring from the work that youve done . It doesnt have to be one thing. Okay. Well, im im sure that im sure that people who read that, people who read history were interested in the revolutionary period. I mean, you may see my scholarly agendas and arguments in this book. Im sure its there, but its more important. I do believe biography and i do believe that that that this is a biography and shes my subject and that i want to explain her her experience and the way that we can make a certain we can understand her as a as an actor. And its more its more important to me that that people realize that she just how creative and accomplished she was and not Just Creative as as a creative as an artist and accomplished as an artist, but also effective in the kind of art that she had an opportunity to do which which which was political as well as a esthetically pleasing, satisfying, if youre willing to meet her, meet her halfway and can think about what the why shes doing things, the way the way shes the way shes doing it, shes doing them so this is not so i think theres no question this is definitely my Phillis Wheatley. And this will be i hope theyll be on other film there. There have already been others. And this is a book written by a historian but was really important to me that that it hold water as a a book about a writer who is as deserving and of that of that kind of treatment that that great writers get, which is to say to explain how she becomes who she becomes and why she makes the choices she does and how and especially how she is both. In bold and and constrained by that. The literary and cultural structures, the market the expectations. So theres been a tendency because of because she doesnt have a long career or life and theres been a tendency to stress how. The limits of. But i think its amazing what she what she and there are no careers for poets in this time much less for her black female ones. So i think its just as interesting to say that she creates a role that then others build on. Then it is to say to stress what might have been if she hadnt died young, which is sort of a common experience for 18th century people and for starving artists in her time and many other times. Well, lets take some questions. Thank you very much. Someone this right . Were friends. But i was like, well, i wasnt placed here. Im not a killer. What youre talking about in terms of meeting her halfway, i think your close reading of the poem, one being brought to america from africa is an incredible example of doing just that. A poem that many people read. Its eight lines. I dont know whether theres time for you to read it. I wonder whether you could give us a sample of how you close read that poem. Because its a poem that people recoil from when they first hear it without the context for understanding how it might subvert the meanings it seems to present at first. Until you look at it more carefully, i dont know if theres time for that, but its this book is a literary criticism as well. So i give you the opportunity youd like to take it. Another one of my origin stories about the book comes exactly from the experience of dealing with that poem in the classroom and the different readings of it that there have been and the turn in recent years toward the possibility that shes doing something subversive in it. Henry louis gates has called it the most reviled in African American literature. Should it be read, please . Yeah. Okay. So im somebody i have it open to the page. I dont remember the point of the page. Okay. To the index. Yeah, ill have to go. Its great index research. Do i think . Yeah. Okay, but i know that i have. This is the first book of mine. I havent indexed, so i know that. Okay, its short. Its short. Okay, so i this book i, i knew my students at temple, i knew some of them would, would, would read it one way. And the reading critically and others would read it as evidence for her being. A toady or an uncle tom. So this is not it. Im in the wrong place now. Okay. So i read it in two voices and i dont i dont know if were going to have time to read it twice. Okay. So and that was and getting away with this and having that be productive in, in my class on the literature of slavery was really what, what made me think maybe, maybe this was going to be a book. So the book is, is the poem is eight lines. And what im going to suggest is that there really the first four lines are doing one thing. And that the third and fourth couplet are doing something else. Twas mercy brought me from my pagan land taught my benighted soul to understand and that theres a god, that theres a savior to once i redemption neither saw nor knew. Some view our sable race with scornful by their color is a diabolic die. Remember christian is , black is king may be refined and joined the angelic train so. You can read that as she saying, oh, thank god i was saved. Thank god they brought me from africa into slavery. Right. So this has been like the worst possible example of someone saying thank you for slavery. It seemed it seems to almost be a proslavery poem. But then at the then by the time you get to that fourth line, shes saying basically some people are racist against us. And she emphasizes that they call us a stable race. Their color is a diabolic dye like like that there. Oh, witchcraft diablos. Like theyre theyre theyre not christian. Theyre so shes saying, okay, so she said maybe shes saying, oh, we can be christian too. We can be refined and join the angelic train. So maybe shes making a big concession. But the context here is, is really methodist, some methodists, some antislavery methodists i found in my research or already criticizing some for some people who are using conversion as an an excuse to say, oh, you know what, we can make slavery better. Its really okay. And some methods, some christian antislavery folks are already pushing against that. So she is deliberate, setting up meeting, meeting readers where they are. She knows this idea of conversion is out there and so she introduces it. Say, okay, you want me to say this . Im going to say it. Im going to put it out there and then im going to turn it around, say, you know, some of you saying people are basically are basically racists and using racism to distance us rather than doing christian fellowship. So so really shes taking shes shes engaging with the state of the debate over slavery and turning it in an antiracist dimension and then deconstructing the racism of her audiences in a really in a way that by the end of it is really satirical. Shes mimicking what people want her to say and what people are saying about about about blacks. And i think its actually so subversive that she didnt dare publish it until her book, until she already knew the book. So she does she her poems circulate. But we dont have any evidence that this one circulated really. But she says in one of the her proposals for her book it set it she its theres a notation she dates them all and she says its 1768. So i interpret it as as one of these ones that shes working on. Shes refining, shes maybe show, maybe showing, maybe thinking about its going to be in the book, but its really one of her most challenging poems that she doesnt really dare come out with in seven quite yet. In 1768. So thats thats really so and it really that thats what i what i do with that one. But it does it does take it does take a lot of close attention to the to the to the rhetoric and, what shes what shes riffing on and the context and the kind you have to read around it to know what im so im sorry. I didnt know how to. Thats the most shorthand version i can reading of it. I do it better in the book. I should have just read what i read because my always my fear about these things is that why is that . Like, i think im back in the classroom and i have until the bell rings right. Anybody else. Okay, this would be a methodology in question. This would be a i was going to ask a very similar question because i teach that poem and ive struggled at that moment in my own classes. But i was going to ask a methodological question and sort of i you talk about what we know and sort of stressing, you know, you know, what you can put in. But in the course of your research, what what was the most challenging aspect of wheatleys life to to to unpack, to unearth what was the what was the single most difficult or a couple of the just from a from a historians perspective. What did what did you find the most challenging in that you you really wrestled with it like, oh, my gosh, how am i going to do this. The beginning and the ending. Because. If she does the we. We dont know about her life before she arrives, shes only eight years old, seven or eight. And how to do talk about the impact of her background with such with such little material and so i that took a lot of that took a lot of thinking how to say enough but not too much because. And that and then we have a similar dilemma with the last the last six or seven years after shes after shes free. And we we know very little about her experience. And and similarly, actually, with her african experience, her last six or seven years, a lot of people have just made us some writers have made assumptions that shes that her that that that dont necessarily hold up. So its a similar similar like sort of i can only get one chapter out of it and my chapters are mostly short and but that was how, how do. That those were the, the toughest things to do both of both because of the evidence but also trying to decide how much what what made sense in light of all the other things id id found and and and how to then. Describe. What she probably experienced and what she probably was thinking while admitting that that more of it has to be speculative than was the case in other chapters within. Then were used to in most in most biographies. But i do i do think i dont think i would have i didnt feel that the book was finished until i had resolved both those things. Its just a quick follow up and i have not read the book yet. I plan to. Were there aspects about the final years of her life that that that you sort of went into thinking, well, ive got the final years of willie. And then you you discovered something. Wow, this really changes my my understanding of of of the trajectory of her life. Given that you dont know all the details. You know, we know so few of the details of the. Well, i did with with the final years i did i did i was already thinking that that it had been underrated that she keeps writing historians had written about her marriage without taking into account just what it means to to to be emancipated and start a family and the economic situation. And in boston and in the other the other towns she lived in and how how much how much and how rapidly thats changing during the war, the revolutionary war and afterwards. And that really it had been telescope shaped and that really she doesnt know how things are going to turn out and i had already been wanting to emphasize that. And john peters is a really impressive guy and that theres an we know enough about him that we should be we should be stressing that hes another one of these potential black geniuses for whom things doesnt work out. He actually is a lot like her. And i talk about others from earlier in her life, and it makes perfect sense that she would marry this guy who like who was really, really impressive and doing extremely impressive things. And that. Then but you know, i had already written that chapter when nina dayton discovered more and published this wonderful article, which she let me see a little bit told me about and let me see a little bit before it came out. And it all fit perfectly. It all fit perfectly with where i was going. So i was able to get a couple more paragraphs out of it thanks to nina and Cornelia Hughes dating her article in the new england quarterly and so i, i kind of it wasnt there werent it wasnt it wasnt really a shock. But one thing i am proud of and that im willing to stick by is that i found more poems in newspapers that i think she published anonymously, which was the norm for poets, the norm for women in the late 18th century. And that i think she had particular reasons to do after after shes under even more of a microscope when she becomes famous. And i and i and some of the most interesting and impressive ones are actually from 1775, 70, 76, 77, 78. So i think that and there are a lot of poems that we know from her late, from her late book proposals that we that dont have. And so i think that on the one hand, thats tragic. On the other hand, it buttresses the sense that she doesnt know that shes going to that shes going to die. And that this book is never going to be published. John peters tries to get it published after twice after, after she dies. But thats really it did fit with where i thought the emphasis should be and where i was going. And also theres been a lot of great scholarship by by literary scholars. And i wont i will try to list them here because ill leave ill leave them that ill leave too many out. But i kind of feel like ive an especially since ive been working on this for 12 years, theres just been more and more. So i do feel like im not im not sort of out here on a ledge in terms these some of the interpretations. Well, i think thats all the time we have. Thank you very much, david this is