The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

He is the author of numerous books, including Colored People, Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Black Man, In Search of Our Roots, and the American Book Award-winning The Signifying Monkey. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University. Gates has brought this absorbing information together in an accessible but comprehensive way.'Ībout the Author Henry Louis Gates, Jr., is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the W.E.B. Writing with all the lyricism and critical skill that place him at the forefront of American letters, Gates brings to life the characters, debates, and controversy that surrounded Wheatley in her day and ours. Free Essay: Phillis Wheatley, once coined the mother of black literature, now, deemed an imitation is the sole focus of Henry Louis Jrs, The Trials of.

explores the pivotal roles that Wheatley and Jefferson played in shaping the black literary tradition. In The Trials of Phillis Wheatley, Henry Louis Gates Jr. But Thomas Jefferson, unlike his contemporaries Ben Franklin and George Washington, refused to acknowledge her gifts as a writer - a repudiation that eventually inspired generations of black writers to build an extraordinary body of literature in their efforts to prove him wrong. For a time, Wheatley was the most famous black woman in the West.

The first person of African descent to publish a book of poems in English, she was emancipated by her owners in recognition of her literary achievement. Book Synopsis In 1773, the slave Phillis Wheatley literally wrote her way to freedom.

The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Henry Louis Gates Jr.