Phillis Wheatley

But one was the idea of the absence of community and having to create and speak and think community.

And this is why I thought Phillis Wheatley was so important to have in this book.

Number one, because when you think about Black culture, people don't think of Phillis Wheatley.

They think of Phillis Wheatley often as someone sitting in their slave master's attic writing poetry.

They don't think of someone who trafficked with other free and enslaved Africans, someone who remembered or at least could have remembered stories from childhood.

But my main point about the community here is that the way that we understand, and it's impossible for us to unthink and unknow Black community hundreds and hundreds of years later, that she did not have that.

But one was the idea of the absence of community and having to create and speak and think community.

And this is why I thought Phillis Wheatley was so important to have in this book.

Number one, because when you think about Black culture, people don't think of Phillis Wheatley.

They think of Phillis Wheatley often as someone sitting in their slave master's attic writing poetry.

They don't think of someone who trafficked with other free and enslaved Africans, someone who remembered or had remembered or at least could have remembered stories from childhood.

But my main point about the community here is that the way that we understand, and it's impossible for us to unthink and unknow Black community hundreds and hundreds of years later, that she did not have that.

But one was the idea of the absence of community and having to create and speak and think community.

And this is why I thought Phillis Wheatley was so important to have in this book.

Number one, because when you think about Black culture, people don't think of Phillis Wheatley.

They think of Phillis Wheatley often as someone sitting in their slave master's attic writing poetry.

They don't think of someone who trafficked with other free and enslaved Africans, someone who remembered or had remembered or at least could have remembered um stories from childhood but my main point about the community here is that the way that we understand and it's impossible for us to unthink and unknow black community hundreds and hundreds of years later that she did not have that doesn't mean that they were not enslaved africans around her free africans around her she had some you know her close friends that were that were slaves that they were that she wrote to now get my facts wrong on that but the idea of a black community or communities of color and variously defined that was something that she began in her poems to speak into existence that's why that chapter is called revelations like the revelation of the communities that she thought of and wanted to speak to and seized and belonged to so that was so So I thought that was an important part of the book, the idea of what communities that you can speak to, think of, and claim for yourself, even if they don't claim you.

So I thought that was super important.

So I'm very interested in that in many ways, I think, as a critique of modernity, which is what I think Black Studies really is.

You just go back to Phyllis Wheatley.

And, you know, I've been writing about Phyllis Wheatley in relationship to Thomas Jefferson because I'm still obsessed with Thomas Jefferson.

Because I went to UVA.

You know, it's a robust countercritique of the ideas of subjecthood, of democracy, of liberalism, you know, and a debate that has been ongoing for hundreds of years.

We are talking about a piece included from...

The piece right in front of it in the way the chronology of the anthology is laid out is Phyllis Wheatley's thoughts on the work of Providence.

And the piece that proceeds that is Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

So in laying out an anthology, as you said, there are so many choices to make, there's so much thought to do, and by putting three people together in conversation who would not have met or interacted, you're inviting the readers into some difficult work of considering what it really means that Americans across ideologies, regions, and identities have all grappled with the divine.

We are talking about a piece included from...

The piece right in front of it in the way the chronology of the anthology is laid out is Phyllis Wheatley's thoughts on the work of Providence.

And the piece that proceeds that is Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

So in laying out an anthology, as you said, there are so many choices to make, there's so much thought to do, and by putting three people together in conversation who would not have met or interacted, you're inviting the readers into some difficult work of considering what it really means that Americans across ideologies, regions, and identities have all grappled with the divine.

We are talking about a piece included from...

The piece right in front of it in the way the chronology of the anthology is laid out is Phyllis Wheatley's thoughts on the work of Providence.

And the piece that proceeds that is Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

So in laying out an anthology, as you said, there are so many choices to make, there's so much thought to do, and by putting three people together in conversation who would not have met or interacted, you're inviting the readers into some difficult work of considering what it really means that Americans across ideologies, regions, and identities have all grappled with the divine.

We are talking about a piece included from...

The piece right in front of it in the way the chronology of the anthology is laid out is Phyllis Wheatley's thoughts on the work of Providence.

And the piece that proceeds that is Thomas Jefferson letter to the Danbury Baptist Association.

So in laying out an anthology, as you said, there are so many choices to make, there's so much thought to do, and by putting three people together in conversation who would not have met or interacted, you're inviting the readers into some difficult work of considering what it really means that Americans across ideologies, regions, and identities have all grappled with the divine.