BOOKS 20: PHILLIS WHEATLEY AND THE AFRICAN-AMERICAN TRADITION

WITH ROWAN RICARDO PHILLIPS

The human urge for self-expression is so powerful that it often challenges conventions that seem set in stone. 

Phillis Wheatley is among the poets whose tremendous capacity to speak out in her own words upends a tradition and inaugurates something truly new. Wheatley is the first person of African descent to publish a book in the United States, in 1773. 

Wheatley's status as the first African-American person to publish a book of poetry in the US is of great importance, and yet it is an ambiguous matter to assign her this role of being 'the first.' It means that Wheatley is more often name-checked than read, and that her achievement is sometimes reduced to being a symbol rather than treated as a writer in her own right. 

In a conversation with Uli Baer, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, a critic and poet, speaks about the significance of being "the first", reflecting on Wheatley and the African-American tradition. Born and raised in New York City, Rowan Ricardo Phillips earned a BA from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. at Brown University. He is the author of several books of criticism and cultural commentary, as well as the poetry collections The Ground (2012), Heaven (2015), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and Living Weapon (2020).