★ 01/09/2023

Waldstreicher (Slavery’s Constitution), a history professor at the City University of New York Graduate Center, delivers a magisterial biography of 18th-century poet Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784). Tracing Wheatley’s trajectory from a promising student to a national celebrity, he explores her development as an artist and focuses on how Wheatley crafted “subversive” meanings and considered “piety, politics, and race” in her work. He begins in 1761 with Wheatley’s arrival by slave ship in Boston, where as a young girl she was enslaved by the Wheatley family until they granted her freedom in 1773, shortly after the publication of her first poetry collection. Waldstreicher excels at teasing out the subtle political messages within Wheatley’s poetry, contending, for instance, that “On Being Brought from Africa to America” satirizes the racism critics accuse it of perpetuating. The author candidly addresses gaps in the historical record, such as when he constructs a plausible account of the under-documented last six years of Wheatley’s life, when her marriage to a domineering grocer took her out of the limelight. The historical scholarship dazzles and the incisive analysis of Wheatley’s poetry suggests she had a more “liberatory political agenda” than she’s often credited for. The result is an indispensable take on an essential early American poet. (Mar.)

"[A] thoroughly researched, beautifully rendered and cogently argued biography . . . 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 country’s history . . . Waldstreicher’s major contribution as a scholar is to take seriously the alternate reality that enslaved people like Wheatley created outside the white gaze." —Kerri Greenidge, The New York Times Book Review

"[An] erudite, enlightening new biography . . . Wheatley emerges in these pages as a literary marvel. Waldstreicher’s comprehensive account is a monument to her prowess . . . The greatest achievement of Waldstreicher’s biography is the portrayal of Wheatley as a serious poet . . . [Waldstreicher's] interpretations equal Wheatley’s own intentional verse, making it a joy to follow along as he unpacks her words and their arrangement." —Tiya Miles, The Atlantic

“The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley . . . puts [Wheatley] smack in the middle of the raging debate over the relationship between the American Revolution and slavery . . . [Waldstreicher] is known for deeply researched, tightly written studies, which aim to complicate any comforting idealization of the founding . . . [The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley] is a founder biography of sorts, treating Wheatley not only as the progenitor of the African American literary tradition but an important political voice in the creation of the nation itself." —Jennifer Schuessler, The New York Times

“[Waldstreicher] expertly re-creates the complex political realities of pre-Revolutionary America. He is especially good at parsing the subtle messages that Wheatley concealed in her verse, explosive devices meant to detonate the racial politics of her time.” —Randall Fuller, The Wall Street Journal

"Biographies of poets can veer into dry territory. Waldstreicher’s text feels like a series of narrative enjambments: Each page bleeds into the next with a tantalizing sense of discovery as the author pulls into better focus a short, brilliant life lived in an era of opaque conflict." —Andrew Dansby, Houston Chronicle

"[An] expansive new biography . . . The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is a rich and necessary book." —Farah Jasmine Griffin, O magazine

"A fascinating and provocative account of [Wheatley's] life and work." —Glenn Altschuler, Florida Courier

"[Waldstreicher] places Wheatley squarely in her times and shows how she navigated them . . . Waldstreicher vividly re-creates Wheatley's Boston . . . His portrait of colonial-era slavery is chilling, and he makes expert use of documents to show its cruelty." —Mary Ann Gwinn, Star Tribune

“Magisterial . . . Waldstreicher excels at teasing out the subtle political messages within Wheatley’s poetry . . . The historical scholarship dazzles and the incisive analysis of Wheatley’s poetry suggests she had a more ‘liberatory political agenda’ than she’s often credited for. The result is an indispensable take on an essential early American poet." —Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Prodigy-poet Phillis Wheatley launched a complexly creative and courageous life of strategic dissent that has never before been so fully illuminated . . . Waldstreicher zestfully establishes an intricately detailed context for his in-depth analysis of Wheatley’s experiences and writings . . . Waldstreicher’s engrossing restorative biography makes one hope for a Hamilton-style celebration of Wheatley’s profound quest.” —Donna Seaman, Booklist

"Intriguing . . . For those familiar only with Wheatley’s often anthologized 'On Being Brought From Africa to America,' the breadth and depth of her poetry will be a revelation." —Kirkus Reviews

“[Waldstreicher’s] in-depth, engrossing biography, The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley . . . adds much to the tumultuous Revolutionary chapter of America’s political and racial history.” —Priscilla Kipp, BookPage

"David Waldstreicher has done something truly magical in this deeply historical, deeply literary biography of Phillis Wheatley. He has recovered her poetical voice (and a treasure trove of her long-forgotten anonymous poems) within the complex world of eighteenth-century slavery and revolution. Anyone who wishes to understand Wheatley and her unique insights into why slavery dominated America’s revolutionary thinking must read this thoughtful, incredibly smart, eye-opening book." —Nancy Isenberg, author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America and Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr

"In David Waldstreicher’s telling, the Greek and Roman classics—the pride of the American founders—never spoke more clearly than to the Black poet Phillis Wheatley. And why not? War, peril on the high seas, kidnappings: she had seen them all and lived them all. Here is Wheatley's dramatic life and subtle voice, richly rendered; As I read, I'd never felt closer to her." —Woody Holton, author of Liberty is Sweet: The Hidden History of the American Revolution

"This remarkable book connects the age of revolution and the worlds of Atlantic slavery not just through impressive historical research but through deft attention to Phillis Wheatley's oft-disdained poetry. Her ostensibly stiff Augustan verses make the connection. Heroic couplets indeed!" —Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, author of A House Full of Females and A Midwife's Tale

“David Waldstreicher's biography of Phillis Wheatley is essential reading about a poet known so well by her name, and yet so little known by the facts, motivations, and nuances of her extraordinary life and her art. As Waldstreicher beautifully states in this turn-pager: ‘she's Homer and Odysseus and the slaves and the women they knew or imagined.’ The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley is a must-read about one of America's most remarkable and least understood poets. This is not only the story of a remarkable revolutionary poet; it is also—amid its triumphs and tragedies—an American saga.” —Rowan Ricardo Phillips, author of Living Weapon and When Blackness Rhymes with Blackness

Sold into slavery at an early age in 1751, Phillis Wheatley asserted her natural genius and became a poet celebrated in the American colonies and Britain. This audiobook serves a double role as a historical biography and a literary one. Kim Staunton's able narration serves both aspects well. She keeps the narrative flowing despite the author's overly detailed digressions on such topics as the history of the Atlantic slave trade and New England maritime commerce. But it is in the author's examination of Wheatley's poetry that Staunton shines. Her recitation makes the poems nearly sound like her own as she captures the poet's tone of intimacy. Wheatley was inspired by Homer's ODYSSEY, and the author uses that as a metaphor for her short but fascinating life. R.C.G. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

2022-12-09
A biography of the Phillis Wheatley focused on her poetry and the politics of Revolutionary-era America.

Waldstreicher, a history professor and author of Slavery’s Constitution and Runaway America, documents Wheatley’s arrival in Boston on the slave ship Phillis, her purchase by Susanna Wheatley in 1761, her storied writing career, and her life after emancipation. The author’s primary focus, however, is Wheatley’s work, about which he offers many intriguing insights. This book, he writes, is “a joint exercise in history and literary criticism.” Waldstreicher argues that Wheatley gave “subversive and productive meanings” to her classical and neoclassical-inspired poetry, becoming both a “political actor and an artist of quality and note” in the 18th-century world she inhabited, a world marked by the “abominable hypocrisy” of American slave owners who likened their oppression by Britain to slavery. For those familiar only with Wheatley’s often anthologized “On Being Brought From Africa to America,” the breadth and depth of her poetry will be a revelation, as will her correspondence with Samson Occom and George Washington; her intimate, lifelong friendship with Obour Tanner, an enslaved woman in Newport, Rhode Island; and the details of Wheatley’s trip with her enslaver’s son to London, where she stayed for six weeks in 1763. The attention that Waldstreicher pays to the complexity of Wheatley’s identities as an African, a woman, and an enslaved person (among other identities) in his close readings of her poetry is sometimes missing from his discussion of her life. Questions like how much control Wheatley had over her own literary productions and their circulation while she was enslaved remain largely unasked. Given his focus on the political contexts and meanings of Wheatley’s work, Waldstreicher leaves room for future biographers to further examine Wheatley’s life as she became the “most famous African in North America and Europe during the era of the American Revolution.”

Wheatley’s poetry comes into sharper focus, but Wheatley herself remains elusive.