How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History

In a new book, “The Age of Phillis,”  the poet and professor Honorée Fanonne Jeffers rewrites the story of Phillis Wheatley who came to America on a slave ship and became a literary celebrity.

Two hundred and fifty-nine years ago this July, a girl captured somewhere between present-day Gambia and Ghana stepped off the Phillis, a slave ship, and onto the docks of Boston Harbor. The only existing account of this day records that she was thought to be “about seven years old, at this time, from the circumstance of shedding her front teeth.” Wrapped in nothing more than “a quantity of dirty carpet,” she was taken to the city’s slave market, where Mrs. Susanna Wheatley, the wife of a wealthy Boston merchant, was in search of a faithful servant for her old age. Though there were “several robust, healthy females” on display, Mrs. Wheatley selected the seven-year-old, “influenced to this decision by the humble and modest demeanor and interesting features of the little stranger.

Read more: The New Yorker