Phillis Wheatley

School Library Journal

YA Most books about slavery in the U.S. depict only plantation slavery common in the South. This title is noteworthy because it is set in Boston during the Revolutionary era, and by the circumstances of Phyllis Wheatley's life which demonstrate a different side of the cruelties of slavery as an institution. Wheatley was seven when bought by John Wheatley; she was educated by Wheatley's wife as if she were her daughter. Phyllis Wheatley became the first black poet in Colonial America, and her fame caused her to be invited to England to meet the King. Upon her master's death, Wheatley's fortunes changed quickly as she found it difficult to make her own way as a freed slave. Jensen writes as if this were a novel, but it is a biography that comes to life. Readers will applaud Wheatley's apparent freedom as her fame builds, and cry when the grim reality of her last years sets in. Readers interested in the institution of slavery or in American literature of the Colonial period will appreciate the historical authenticity; lovers of biography will enjoy a well written, if ultimately tragic, account of a Boston slave's life in the late 18th Century. Dorcas Hand, Episcopal High School, Bellaire