This is the remarkable story of Phillis Wheatley, who is born into an African family of griots, or storytellers, but captured by slave raiders and forced aboard a slave ship, where appalling conditions spell death for many of her companions. Numerous sharks follow the ship, feeding on the corpses of slaves thrown overboard.

Weakened by the voyage and near death in a Boston slave market, Wheatley is bought by a kind family who nurses her back to health and teaches her to read and write. Soon her mistress recognizes that the girl is a quick learner and talented. At the age of 12, a torrent of poetry begins to flow out of Wheatley. Proud of her achievements, her mistress organizes readings in Boston's finest parlors and drawing rooms, and Wheatley's fame spreads. But even when many in Boston are calling her a prodigy and a genius, some remain unsure that a slave should be able to write, much less write poetry. When Phillis travels to London she is a media sensation, feted by the cream of English society. A book of her poems is published, and she finally gains her freedom.

This amazing story, wide in scope, is based on fact and told convincingly from young Wheatley's point of view.

Dr. Afua Cooper is an award-winning historian, author, and poet. She is professor of Black studies in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Dalhousie University where she holds a Killam Research Chair. Afua has mobilized Black studies in Canada through her scholarly work, and artistic endeavours—this within the academy and beyond. She established the Black Studies program at Dalhousie, first as a minor, and later as part of the leadership team that launched the Bachelor of Arts in Black and African Diaspora Studies. This is the first such program in Canada. Dr. Cooper also founded the Black Canadian Studies Association. She was awarded the Royal Society of Canada’s J.B. Tyrrell Historical medal for her outstanding contribution to Canadian history. Afua is the Principal Investigator for A Black People’s History of Canada project.

Afua Cooper's profile page

• Winner, Beacon of Freedom Award
• Winner, Best Books for Kids & Teens, Canadian Children's Book Centre
• Winner, Applied Arts Photography & Illustration Award, Applied Arts

My Name is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom

Noted historian Afua Cooper has brought her expertise to this fictionalized memoir of Phillis Wheatley, who published a book of poetry in 1773 becoming the first Black person in America to do so.

Seven-year-old Penda Wane is born free on the edge of the great African desert. Training to become a griot – a praise-singer and poet – her whole world changes when she is captured by slave traders. After enduring the long walk to the sea and an even more grueling journey by ship to America, she is left to die on a Boston wharf. The Wheatleys, however, take pity on her and buy her for a ‘mere trifle.’ Penda Wane is renamed Phillis Wheatley and her mistress, Susanna Wheatley, begins an experiment to see if a Black slave is intelligent enough to learn to read and write.

Soon surpassing her mistresses’ abilities, Phillis becomes an accomplished poet but must prove she is, in fact, the author of such poems. Eventually she is sent to England to have her poetry published, as American publishers will not publish the work of a Black slave. Phillis gains her freedom and marries John Peters, a free Black man who is studying law.

Afua Cooper tells the story of how a young girl destined to become a griot in her home country eventually becomes a famous poet in the country in which she is enslaved. She arouses our sympathy as she describes the loneliness Phyllis encounters by becoming a learned Black woman. Through her descriptions of life in Africa, Cooper also helps us to imagine how frighteningly different life in America must have been for those enslaved.

Appropriate for students in intermediate/early senior grades this book is an excellent companion novel to My Name is Henry Bibb, also by author Afua Cooper.

My Name Is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom

Phillis Wheatley (1753-1784) was a slave who went on to become America’s first black poet and the first black American woman to be published. This story, written in Wheatley’s voice, tells of her journey to freedom. The book includes a prologue and an epilogue.