Latest / The Breakfast Club / BLK LIT - Phillis Wheatley - The Letters

Transcript

BLK LIT - Phillis Wheatley - The Letters · The Breakfast Club

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: a podcast about Black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: When we talk about early African American literature, it's easy
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: to focus on books, the first novels, the first published poets, etc. However,
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: we now understand that the reality is much much broader.
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: Black literature in early America existed in letters, newspapers, and
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: even songs. So you have to look beyond the obvious,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and in these spaces we find some of the most
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: profound stories of resilience, connection, and self definition. It's the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: writings passed from hand to hand, stories whispered from one
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: to another, and sometimes it's a friendship written in ink,
• 0:58
  Speaker 1: held on to for decades, surviving all odds. One such
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: story can be told in the letters between Philips, Sweetly
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: and Overturn. Now, Phyllis wrote many, many letters to different people,
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: but these letters, written over the course of six years,
• 1:18
  Speaker 1: are very special. Their correspondence offers us a rear glipse
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: into friendship, faith, and an intellectual exchange between two black
• 1:30
  Speaker 1: women who are enslaved at the height of the Revolutionary War.
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: I would never make a claim about a first African
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: American anything in this period, because there's a lot of
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: you know, oftentimes our ideas of oh, what is the
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: first novel to be written or the first story, those
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: are in flux and change often. One thing I would
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: say for Black literature in general is that we can't
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: understand Black literature if we focus just on books. You
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: have to look to other print media. So much literature
• 2:08
  Speaker 2: that's published in newspapers, for example, and we're thinking about
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: even songs and broadsides. There's a lot of other places
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: where African American literature happens that aren't books. Given how
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: much the landscape for early African American literature has changed
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: and shifted in the last couple of decades, the classes
• 2:27
  Speaker 2: that I teach now just wouldn't be possible for undergrad
• 2:31
  Speaker 2: me because I wouldn't have had the things to do them,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: I wouldn't have had access to the same texts, I
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: wouldn't have had access to the same resources. Every you know,
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: things are just different and changing all the time, and
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: sometimes there's a new rediscovery of a piece that shifts
• 2:48
  Speaker 2: how we teach and what we teach it with. So
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: those are super, super exciting and one of the things
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: that really kind of draws me to this field is
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: that possibility. There's always possibility in the black archive.
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: What is interesting and beautiful about these letters between these
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: two black women, between these two slaves, to be exact,
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: is that they share something beyond the ideas of survivor mode.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: They were building a sisterhood while the world was burning
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: literally around them. The war wasn't some distant, unfathomable conflict.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: It was smoldering right outside of their front doors, impossible
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: to ignore. But through all of this chaos, Phyllis and
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: Uber kept writing, kept sharing, both very aware of the
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: world around them, the community that they were building, the
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: care for each other, and the importance of communicating.
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: The closeness of their relationship. I think that really comes
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: out of the less and when you contrast them with
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: other letters she wrote, it's not that she doesn't say
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: what she thinks in her letters. It's just that there's
• 4:07
  Speaker 3: another dimension to that relationship that we don't get to
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: see elsewhere. And it should suggest to us that she
• 4:20
  Speaker 3: is not alone, that she has a what I call
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: it a cohort, a community. That the idea that she
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: could only have done this if she'd been isolated which
• 4:33
  Speaker 3: was kind of standard in the literature for a long time,
• 4:37
  Speaker 3: that she could only have been as studious and as
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: much of a as conversant with Anglo American literary culture
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: if she had not been part of a enslaved and
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: African community. I think that's nonsense, Like why can't we
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: imagine that she was code switching. Why can't we imagine
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: that she had a whole range of audiences and interlocutors.
• 5:04
  Speaker 3: And that's one of the things I want to convey,
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: and how sensitive she is to who she's talking about
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: and dealing with. We're talking about someone who has had
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: a cosmopolitan experience. We have no idea what her life
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: is like before she's eight, but many people who are
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: in the slave trade have experience a lot of locations
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: and are moved around a lot before they end up
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: where they end up. And she's highly likely one of
• 5:29
  Speaker 3: those people, even though she's only about eight years old
• 5:31
  Speaker 3: when she gets to Boston, and Boston is a place
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: where that's ten to fifteen percent African when she gets there,
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: and there's a particularly been an upswing of importation, so
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: there are a lot of enslaved people her age, and
• 5:43
  Speaker 3: a lot of those people are from different parts of
• 5:46
  Speaker 3: West Africa, and she knows that there are a lot
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: of different ways to connect to people. And so rather
• 5:53
  Speaker 3: than see her as having converted to a dominant culture,
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: I see her as someone who has realized that culture
• 6:02
  Speaker 3: is multiple and that there are different languages and she's
• 6:06
  Speaker 3: adept at learning them. So I argue that the neoclassical
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: literature is particularly important to her. And that's not instead
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: of the Christian stuff, it's in addition to and in
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: relationship to it. So if we think of those two
• 6:17
  Speaker 3: things as languages that she's completely able to riff on
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: so quickly, why would we think that she doesn't have
• 6:24
  Speaker 3: others that don't necessarily come out in the poetry, but
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: that we might get glimpses of in letters, or we
• 6:30
  Speaker 3: might get glimpses of from knowing who she's talking to
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: and where she was. So the political languages are others
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: for me. So what does this have to do with
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: obor isn't it interesting that they talk about their you
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: get glimpses into their mutual friends. And it's certainly clear
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: that Phyllis had traveled to Newport probably several times that
• 6:51
  Speaker 3: and her first poem is published in the newspaper there,
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: so there's some relationship between Newport and Boston and religious
• 6:58
  Speaker 3: folks and others there. It's clear that she knows some
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: of the people that Ober knows, and that they're aware
• 7:05
  Speaker 3: that there are people who travel between Newport and Boston
• 7:07
  Speaker 3: and Connecticut. So she's part of these wider black networks
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: which are connected to the Wheatly's networks, and ministers and
• 7:14
  Speaker 3: other folks you know who are referred to who carry
• 7:17
  Speaker 3: the letters, mister Babcock's servant, Ebenezer Pemberton, people who were
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: able to point to as being who they were.
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: I definitely like to think about them as being in community.
• 7:29
  Speaker 4: But even more than that, Like, what really interests me
• 7:32
  Speaker 4: is the kind of there's a tension between the public
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: and private. On the one hand, these letters between Uber
• 7:39
  Speaker 4: Tanner and Phyllis Wheatley have this air of intimacy because
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: it's in the genre of the letter, but then there's
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: also this kind of public performative part of it, because
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: there wasn't an expectation that this correspondence would just stay
• 7:54
  Speaker 4: between two people. And so then I'm thinking, like, so,
• 7:57
  Speaker 4: what were the real conversations like between Luthertanna and feel
• 8:01
  Speaker 4: this movie, like, that's what I want to know. So anyway,
• 8:05
  Speaker 4: that's kind of what I think about the relationship between
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: the two, that there's some part of it that we've
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: got to think about as an element of performativity, and
• 8:15
  Speaker 4: then there's some part of it that's more intimate, and
• 8:18
  Speaker 4: like I can't know which is which.
• 8:21
  Speaker 5: The letters are an interesting glimpse into the American colonial
• 8:24
  Speaker 5: landscape through the eyes of a friendship between two black
• 8:30
  Speaker 5: women who are also enslaved at times. Phil's Leatly, who's
• 8:35
  Speaker 5: based in Boston, and Obertanner, who is based in Newport.
• 8:40
  Speaker 5: And what we find by way of their letters is
• 8:42
  Speaker 5: that at various points they are made refugees. Boston is
• 8:46
  Speaker 5: under siege, so Latly has to leave in seventeen seventy five.
• 8:51
  Speaker 5: Newport will be under siege by the end of seventeen
• 8:54
  Speaker 5: seventy six, and uber China has to leave Newport. So
• 8:59
  Speaker 5: I think the Revolutionary War is a big deal to them,
• 9:05
  Speaker 5: especially since they're living in places where the Revolutionary War
• 9:08
  Speaker 5: is happening. It's not an abstract idea, it's not a
• 9:11
  Speaker 5: theoretical problem, it's a real life problem. I would also
• 9:15
  Speaker 5: say that what is important is the friendship as they articulated,
• 9:21
  Speaker 5: because there are a number of stories, a number of
• 9:26
  Speaker 5: answers to questions that we just can't get because they
• 9:30
  Speaker 5: already know one another, So questions like how do they
• 9:33
  Speaker 5: need I have no idea, and any of the other
• 9:36
  Speaker 5: kind of background questions, the letters don't provide answers to that.
• 9:40
  Speaker 5: But what the letters do do is kind of dig
• 9:42
  Speaker 5: into their friendship.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: There is a theory that they meant on the passage
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: coming over, which would have solidified their connection. John Wheatley
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: was a merchant by trade. The two families could have
• 9:57
  Speaker 1: crossed paths at some point, a Newport, or any other
• 10:02
  Speaker 1: number of possibilities. The mystery on how their friendship was
• 10:06
  Speaker 1: initially formed will remain just that a mystery, but the
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: sentiment and the words she chose to send to Uber
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: can be felt and are meaningful. Considering there was a
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: war going on and all of the other circumstances, there
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: was definitely a sense to write with sincerity and intention.
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: On July nineteenth, seventeen seventy two, Wheatly writes.
• 10:40
  Speaker 6: Dear Uber, I have received your kind letter, and I'm
• 10:44
  Speaker 6: glad to hear of your welfare. I have been indisposed
• 10:48
  Speaker 6: for some time past, but through divine goodness, I am
• 10:53
  Speaker 6: somewhat better at present. I hope the correspondence between us
• 10:57
  Speaker 6: will continue, which may have the happy effect of improving
• 11:01
  Speaker 6: our mutual friendship. Till we meet in the region of
• 11:05
  Speaker 6: consummate blessedness. Let us endeavor, by the assistance of divine grace,
• 11:11
  Speaker 6: to live the life, and we shall die the death
• 11:14
  Speaker 6: of the righteous. May this be a happy case. I am,
• 11:21
  Speaker 6: dear friend, your affectionate sister.
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: This phrase draws from numbers twenty three to ten in
• 11:29
  Speaker 1: the Bible, where Balam expresses a desire to die the
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: death of the righteous. Wheatley uses this reference to emphasize
• 11:39
  Speaker 1: her aspiration for a virtuous life leading to a blessed afterlife.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: She expresses her appreciation for Tanner's friendship and emphasizes the
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: importance of maintaining their correspondence to strengthen their bond. She
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: reflects on her recent illness and conveys her hope that
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: with divine assistance, they will lead righteous lives together and
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: ultimately attain eternal happiness, and we shall die the death
• 12:12
  Speaker 1: of the righteous. This letter highlights Wheatley's deep spirituality, her
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: relationship with the Bible and the value she placed on
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: enduring friendships. They wrote to hold on to each other,
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: to carve out a space where their voices mattered. And
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: we know that it mattered because Uber cherished this exchange.
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: She held on to it for nearly half a century
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: because they were important to her, and perhaps she also
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: knew how important they would be for others in the future.
• 12:47
  Speaker 6: For us, the.
• 12:48
  Speaker 5: Letters go from seventeen seventy two to seventeen seventy nine,
• 12:53
  Speaker 5: and Ubertanna holds on to the letters until the early
• 12:58
  Speaker 5: eighteen thirties, until right before she dies, and then she
• 13:02
  Speaker 5: gives them to her pastor's wife. And I think that
• 13:05
  Speaker 5: that's an important kind of testament to the relationship that
• 13:07
  Speaker 5: she has weekly and also her own sense of her
• 13:12
  Speaker 5: legacy and wanting to make sure that Wheatly's story is
• 13:18
  Speaker 5: told alongside her own. So she hands off the letters
• 13:23
  Speaker 5: to her pastor's wife, Kavin eith Feacher, who thirty years
• 13:27
  Speaker 5: later and he is eighteen sixty three, gives them to
• 13:31
  Speaker 5: her nephew in law, who then gives them the Charles Dean,
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: who works for the Massachusetts Historical Society, which is why
• 13:39
  Speaker 5: we can read the letters today.
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: This was more than just her friendship, more than even sisterhood.
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: This was legacy building. Wheatley wasn't just writing to connect.
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: She was playing chess in a world that tried to
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: keep her off the She sent poems to people in
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: power not just because she believed in them, but because
• 14:07
  Speaker 1: she wanted to be seen. She knew the value of
• 14:11
  Speaker 1: her work. She knew that her words had the strength
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: of immortality. She knew she was worthy, and she very
• 14:23
  Speaker 1: well knew the game.
• 14:25
  Speaker 7: Well, why did she choose to write Washington? She could
• 14:27
  Speaker 7: have created poetry and she could have wrote to other people.
• 14:31
  Speaker 7: Why did she choose to write the Secretary of North America?
• 14:36
  Speaker 7: Who was this dude England sit Over to be like
• 14:40
  Speaker 7: the person responsible for all of North America? Why did
• 14:43
  Speaker 7: she use George Whitfield's rhetoric Earth in seventeen seventy to
• 14:48
  Speaker 7: write one of her most popular poems and then specifically
• 14:51
  Speaker 7: take that poem and send it to the Countess of Huntington,
• 14:55
  Speaker 7: who is in the Hastens in order to kind of
• 14:57
  Speaker 7: get a financial beneficiary and to get someone she She
• 15:00
  Speaker 7: had rhetorical goals, aims, and desires and strategy, so a
• 15:06
  Speaker 7: lot of us think when she writes these people and
• 15:08
  Speaker 7: you know, some of these people are slave owners, and
• 15:10
  Speaker 7: she's not saying anything about slavery. It's all about like Christianity.
• 15:15
  Speaker 7: I think that a lot of it was her trying
• 15:17
  Speaker 7: to get herself in front of people who she felt
• 15:20
  Speaker 7: had some power, right, and we kind of knew. I
• 15:24
  Speaker 7: was thinking about how power is going to be played out,
• 15:27
  Speaker 7: whether or not England was in control of North America,
• 15:30
  Speaker 7: or whether or not the Americans will be in control
• 15:32
  Speaker 7: of North America, whomever. Right, she wanted to put herself
• 15:36
  Speaker 7: in front of those people, perhaps that she would be
• 15:39
  Speaker 7: the example, right, you know, an African person willing to
• 15:42
  Speaker 7: be part of the colonial American society, part of the
• 15:45
  Speaker 7: American society post revolution and one vein but also too
• 15:49
  Speaker 7: in this sense that you know, she felt that she
• 15:51
  Speaker 7: had something to say, not necessarily for those people at
• 15:55
  Speaker 7: that particular time, but for us.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 15:57
  Speaker 7: And one of the ways that we think about if
• 16:00
  Speaker 7: African American rhetorical practices have been in part uniquely signified
• 16:06
  Speaker 7: to or connected to abolitionism, right, one of the most
• 16:10
  Speaker 7: important twos of abolitionism is that you don't write simply
• 16:13
  Speaker 7: for yourself to be free, but for the next generation
• 16:16
  Speaker 7: of people to live in a more prosperous society. So
• 16:20
  Speaker 7: my thinking too is that she's trying to define a
• 16:23
  Speaker 7: moral authority that would far exceed her temporer time on earth.
• 16:27
  Speaker 7: She wanted to leave a lasting rhetorical and written record
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: to how she tried to how she labored, what her
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: vocation was. And so I think that she, like so
• 16:37
  Speaker 7: many Africans in this particular period, so many African Americans
• 16:41
  Speaker 7: in this particular period, began to kind of think about
• 16:44
  Speaker 7: ways in which they can produce written records.
• 16:47
  Speaker 4: In fact, Phillis Whitey only published one volume, a forward you,
• 16:50
  Speaker 4: but she tried to publish the second one, but you know,
• 16:53
  Speaker 4: there was a little thing like the revolution, that war,
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: that kind of you know. And so when shed an
• 17:00
  Speaker 4: advertisement for that second volume, she listed a table of contents,
• 17:05
  Speaker 4: and in her table of contents it was a series
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: of letters that she was including as part of her
• 17:10
  Speaker 4: second volume. So that tells me that when Phyllis Wheatley
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: was doing her letter correspondence, there was some part of
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: it where she was thinking these letters might be for
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: public consumption. And so then that makes me think, how
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: does one do that, Like, how do you write a
• 17:26
  Speaker 4: letter and balance the private and the public.
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: Not by choice, but she always had two audiences in mind,
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: one the white people who might publish her in two
• 17:41
  Speaker 1: the black people who would truly understand. And so, like
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: every great poet, she wrote with layered texts, with words
• 17:51
  Speaker 1: that would carry the truth for those who needed it
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: while still being respectable.
• 17:57
  Speaker 7: African American people have at least have always had to
• 18:00
  Speaker 7: be speaking to at least two audiences right trying to
• 18:03
  Speaker 7: think about their identity themselves, especially if other black people
• 18:07
  Speaker 7: will be reading it. They're thinking about that particular audience,
• 18:09
  Speaker 7: but they're also concerning themselves with their survival life line.
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: You are listening to Black lit when they say that
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: the Bible was used to keep black folks in chains,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: but Phyllis flipped it back on them. She didn't swallow
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: the version of Christianity that said know your place. She
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: read deeper, looked harder, and found her own faith, a
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: faith that called slavery what it was.
• 18:45
  Speaker 7: And in seventeen seventy four, for instance, she wrote a
• 18:48
  Speaker 7: letter to Samson Acum, who is a Native American Presbyterian
• 18:52
  Speaker 7: minister who also goes to London prior to Weekly and
• 18:56
  Speaker 7: he'd written about the treatment of enslaved Africans, and she
• 18:59
  Speaker 7: writes him alert and says, thank you for your advocacy
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: for black people. And she says that everything I write,
• 19:04
  Speaker 7: and of course I'm paraphrasing and summarizing here, but she says,
• 19:08
  Speaker 7: everything I write, I do not for their hurt, but
• 19:10
  Speaker 7: to convince them of the strange ascertainty of their actions
• 19:13
  Speaker 7: and conducts, which is diametrically opposite.
• 19:17
  Speaker 1: In this letter, Wheatley eloquently critiques the hypocrisy of those
• 19:22
  Speaker 1: who advocate for liberty while oppressing others, drawing parallels between
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: the plight of enslaved Africans and the Israelites in Egypt.
• 19:33
  Speaker 8: She writes, for in every human breast God has implanted
• 19:40
  Speaker 8: a principle which we call love of freedom. It is
• 19:45
  Speaker 8: impatient of oppression and pants for deliverance. And by the
• 19:51
  Speaker 8: leave of our modern Egyptians, I will assert that the
• 19:56
  Speaker 8: same principle lives in us. God grants deliverance in his
• 20:02
  Speaker 8: own way and time, and get him honor upon all
• 20:07
  Speaker 8: those whose avarice impels them to countenance and help forward
• 20:12
  Speaker 8: the calamities of their fellow creatures. This I desire not
• 20:18
  Speaker 8: for their hurts, but to convince them of the strange
• 20:22
  Speaker 8: absurdity of their conduct, whose words and actions are so
• 20:27
  Speaker 8: diametrically opposite, how well the cry for liberty and the
• 20:33
  Speaker 8: reverse disposition of their exercise of oppressive power over others
• 20:38
  Speaker 8: degree I humbly think it does not require the penetration
• 20:43
  Speaker 8: of philosopher to determine.
• 20:48
  Speaker 7: So therefore, she's very mindful that people are using Christianity,
• 20:53
  Speaker 7: using faith to say that African people should be enslaved,
• 20:56
  Speaker 7: that they need to be controlled, that they're violent xyz.
• 20:59
  Speaker 7: And she said that I don't see this in the
• 21:01
  Speaker 7: literature that I'm reading about God. I don't see this right.
• 21:04
  Speaker 7: And thus she's revising that narrative about how she's assessing
• 21:09
  Speaker 7: her faith. And she goes on, I think with that
• 21:11
  Speaker 7: particular perspective, which I think would make her feel that
• 21:14
  Speaker 7: she's the one who's in the superior position, that she's
• 21:17
  Speaker 7: the one who has been author to offer an education
• 21:21
  Speaker 7: and to moralize, if you will, people who are less
• 21:25
  Speaker 7: learned on the tenets of Christianity.
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: Isn't it interesting that she gets political in that wonderful
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: letter which she talks about the hypocrisy of of the
• 21:33
  Speaker 3: modern Egyptians, and who is she talking about it? She's
• 21:35
  Speaker 3: talking about the British. Who are the modern Egyptians of
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: the British, of the Americans? Are they both like that?
• 21:40
  Speaker 3: We only have it because somebody chose to take it
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: out of her letter and put it in the newspapers
• 21:45
  Speaker 3: where it gets reprinted. But that shows us so we
• 21:48
  Speaker 3: have no idea. She may have written dozens or hundreds
• 21:50
  Speaker 3: of letters that we don't have right or said different
• 21:53
  Speaker 3: things to different people. She's trying things out. She doesn't
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: know what's going to happen next, who's going to win
• 21:57
  Speaker 3: the war, and all these things. And so this is
• 21:59
  Speaker 3: the wind into her practice all the way through, from
• 22:03
  Speaker 3: the beginning, all the way to the end. And so
• 22:05
  Speaker 3: often we've wanted to say, oh, she's she throws in
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: her lot with the Patriots and things don't work out
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: for her in its drag, or she has these kinds
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: of ideas. This is what she thinks about white people,
• 22:16
  Speaker 3: or this is what she thinks about the patriots, or
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: this is what she thinks about Christianity, like as if
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: she's not someone who's like saying different things to different people,
• 22:23
  Speaker 3: and it's evolving depending on what she thinks is possible,
• 22:26
  Speaker 3: and she doesn't know what's going to happen next. It's
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: because we know so little that the chronology is and
• 22:32
  Speaker 3: are missing so much, and the life is so relatively short, right,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: that the chronology is important. And it's actually the paying
• 22:40
  Speaker 3: attention to that where we can see her making decisions
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: and choosing to do certain things at certain times in
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: certain situations. And for me, that proves both that how
• 22:49
  Speaker 3: deliberate she is and how creative she is, but also
• 22:52
  Speaker 3: how political she is.
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: And Wheatley wasn't alone in this fight. Black writers, preachers,
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: and thinkers were flipping the script everywhere, challenging these so
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: called men of God at every turn.
• 23:06
  Speaker 7: That's why the nineteenth century looks like it look. And
• 23:08
  Speaker 7: slavery would come to an end in the eighteen sixties
• 23:11
  Speaker 7: in part because per slavery advocates would be the members
• 23:14
  Speaker 7: of Congress and all these other people, but they would
• 23:17
  Speaker 7: continuously use religion. Right as the two suggest that African
• 23:21
  Speaker 7: people were enslave. But you have so many African American
• 23:24
  Speaker 7: people and some I guess you know Anglo American people
• 23:27
  Speaker 7: writing at the time as well, would you know challenge
• 23:30
  Speaker 7: against that and say that you know the way that
• 23:32
  Speaker 7: they see faith, Christianity or Islam, because Islam is very
• 23:35
  Speaker 7: important in early America too. The way that they are
• 23:38
  Speaker 7: seeing these faith kind of the way that they read them,
• 23:41
  Speaker 7: would suggest that slavery shouldn't be a part of God's children.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Wheatley wasn't begging for approval. She was teaching and holding
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: up a mirror, making them see their own contradictions. And
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: it is in that act that she reclaimed her power.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: The letters feel deeply personal, but they weren't meant to
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: be hidden. Back then, letters weren't private like text messages
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: are today. They passed through hands and were copied and
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: were sometimes even published. Phyllis knew this. She expected her
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: words to last, and.
• 24:17
  Speaker 5: I think as of right now, what makes the friendship
• 24:19
  Speaker 5: important is that currently the only documented by way of
• 24:27
  Speaker 5: letters friendship between two black women who were also enslaved.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: Uber didn't just hold on to Phyllis's letters. She made
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: sure that they survived so that we could read them today.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: That's the thing about black joy. It persists. Even in
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: the eighteenth century, when the world told them that they
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: were nothing, Phyllis and Uber built something undeniable. They wrote
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: themsel into history. In history for once held on to them.
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: Special thanks to all of the guests on today's episode
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: in order that you heard their voices. Bridget Fielder, David Wallsheiser,
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Cassie Smith, Tara a Bidam, Elima Shabaz reading the Letters
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: by Phillip Sweetley and Don Holmes.
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: Black Lit is a.
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: Black Effect original series in partnership with I Heart Media.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Is written and created by myself Jack Queise Thomas and
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: executive produced alongside Dolly s Bishop. Chanelle Collins is the
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: director of Production, Head of Talent Nicole Spence, writer producer
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer is Jabari Davis, and
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: the mix and sound design is by the humble Duane Crawford.
• 25:55
  Speaker 1: Gratitude is an action, so I have to give praise
• 25:58
  Speaker 1: to those who took the time out to write review.
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: Please keep sharing and we will promise to bring more
• 26:04
  Speaker 1: writers and greater episodes to you. Also, if you're looking
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: to become a writer or in search of a supportive
• 26:15
  Speaker 1: writing community, join me for a free creative writing session
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: on my website Black writers Room dot com, b LK
• 26:23
  Speaker 1: Writer's Room dot com, or hit me up directly for
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: more details at underscore t h A T S P
• 26:32
  Speaker 1: E a c E.
• 26:33
  Speaker 6: That's peace.