(photo taken from the Phillis Wheatley Community Center)

The Name

Phillis Wheatley was taken from her home in Africa at a very young age and put on a slave ship and taken to Boston where she was sold as a slave. The ship she was put on was called Phillis; which is most likely where she got her first name.

This is a general depiction of a slave ship. Could you honestly imagine being named after this; the thing that carried you and anyone who looked like you away to hell? What would it be like to identify as this? And what is the painstaking process like of finding an identity not based off of that name while everyone “above you” is forcing that identity onto you.

The Slave

Phillis Wheatley was not in good health when she arrived at the Wheatley home (who would be?) and was kept as a house slave. The Wheatley’s daughter became very fond of Phillis and she was soon kept primarily as a companion for the Wheatley daughter. Under this circumstance Phillis had the unusual chance of becoming educated. And boy did she ever! Phillis learned the English language within 16 months of coming to America. She had never been exposed to the English language before making this quite the accomplishment. She continued to learn Latin and Greek and became a published poet at the age of 12.

The Writer

Luckily, when the Wheatleys found Phillis writing on a wall with chalk they encouraged her to learn. From that pressure, we gained a number of adored poems. Phillis Wheatley  was the first published African American female writer.  She wrote one book of poems: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. After an inspiring trip to London under the Wheatley family, Phillis returned home to be given her freedom. 

The Free Woman 

Phillis never had it easy. She lived a long difficult life, which does make her story even more enticing. After several of the Wheatley family members passed, Phillis married John Peters. Peters was a free black man who had a business venture that failed. Phillis began to work once more as a servant to make ends meet. She would publish a few more poems and write sporadically. Phillis died very poor, but as a free woman. Her final manuscripts were never found.

Whooo, that was heavy! All bummer things aside; Phillis was a bad …! It doesn’t get much more resilient than Phillis Wheatley. A resounding “get it girl” is definitely in order. And just to propel any new found love for this amazing woman you may have found; check this cool stuff out:

If you love snail mail as much as I do, check out these Phillis Whealtey post cards from Zazzle:

Or if you like adorable and historical things you can buy this adorable doll here.

Dang, that is cute!

N. Scott Momaday, referred to as the “Writer Warrior” by one source—was an American author of Kiowa descent and a Pulitzer Prize winner for fiction. His life began in Lawton, Oklahoma on a ranch in the Kiowa reservation with his grandparents. He completed his undergrad at the University of New Mexico and his master’s and Ph.D at Stanford University which awarded him a poetry fellowship to the creative writing program.

He became infatuated with literature at a young age which fueled his writing destiny, eventually publishing works in literary criticism, Native American culture, fiction, and poetry. He also spent years teaching on the Apache reservation like his grandparents. His story is one of learning how to successfully exist in the liminal space between two identifying cultures—one of an American western and the other as a Kiowa descendant; he considers himself part of both. For this reason, his works focus on the Native American tradition—as he was raised with Kiowa traditions of his father’s family but also with the Navajo, Apache and Pueblo Indian cultures of the Southwest. During his academic career, his academic writings expertise was centered around authors like Emily Dickinson and Frederick Goddard Tuckerman, in addition to the study of the oral traditions of his people. Growing up having heard the oral traditions of his ancestors, his works focus on the themes in these cultures and the recording of these oral parables. His mother, of Cherokee and English decent, also became a writer and published children’s books.

Henry James was born in New York City on April 15th, 1843. Henry was the second of five children in his family. His father, Henry James Sr., was an extremely wealthy and influential man during this time. Henry James Sr. was well known in the literaryworld and frequently associated with writers such as Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and Longfellow. Henry James Sr. thought that formal education was extraordinary important and he sent his children to various tutors throughout Europe to study literature, language, science and mathematics. Henry James Jr. was not fond of taking mathematics but attempted to study law and science. 

Henry James Jr. attended Harvard Law School for one semester before leaving in 1862. Just two years later, James decided his new career would be as a writer. After this decision James spent much of his time traveling back and forth between America and various European cities working on his writing. In 1874 James lived in Italy for a period of time to compose his second novel Roderick Hudson. After completion of this novel he traveled back to New York for a period of time before returned to Europe to live in Paris. In Paris James worked for various newspapers and literary magazines as a way to make a living. Both Henry James Jr. and Sr. believed that journalism was not a sufficient type of writing but James used it as a way to make money so that he could spend more time focusing on his fiction work. James had a growing fan base but he did not capture the attention of Paris with his stories the way he had hoped, so he picked up and moved to London, England in 1876. While living in London, James worked on his story “Daisy Miller” that became one of his best known stories dealing with international issues.

Henry James was considered to be a highly social person because he often partook in social events but not much is known about his private life. James was known to be reserved in terms of his own life and did not often talk about relationships or other personal information. James’ family urged him throughout his life to get married but he refused and never formally married a spouse. It is not clear who James’ had relationships with though he had several female friends in his lifetime. James were also known for hanging out with younger, handsome men but it is unclear if he ever had any type of intimate relation with either men or women.

In 1904 James returned to the United States for the first time in 20 years to begin a cross country lecture tour, which later inspired him to write a series of essays. After this time James became increasingly depressed because he did not become as successful as he had hoped and was losing his audience. He spent four years revising various works of his to be published in a 24 volume “New York Edition” but received little monetary  gain or public attention from this venture. In 1911 and 1912 he received honorary degrees from both Harvard and Oxford. In 1915 James denounced his American citizenship because he was outraged at the United States’ unwillingness to join World War I and became an official British citizen. The following year Henry James received an Order of Merit from King George V. Sadly that same year on February 28th James died of pneumonia after experiencing several strokes and declining health.

Sources:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/american/genius/henry_bio.html

http://www.online-literature.com/henry_james/

Adrienne Rich

Adrienne Rich was born in Baltimore, Maryland on May 16, 1929. She was born into an upper middle class family- her father was a pathologist and her mother was a concert pianist and composer. Her Father was Jewish and like her mother, she and her sister were raised Christians.

She discovered her love of reading and poetry in her father’s personal library. Rich was home schooled until she was in the 4^th grade. Rich’s father was very pushy when it came to his eldest daughter’s education and he was quoted saying he “planned to create a prodigy” and she described herself as a people pleaser at an early age. She was dedicated to her studies and expected to excel later in life. Rich received her college diploma in 1951 from Radcliffe College where she concentrated on poetry and perfecting her craft. She received two awards in her senior year of college- one was the Guggenheim Fellowship which gave Rich the ability to study for a year in Oxford.

Soon after graduation Rich married her husband, Alfred Haskell Conrad, an Econ professor at Harvard and with Conrad she gave birth to three sons.

So here is where one would start scratching their heads- Adrienne Rich is nationally known for bringing the oppression of women-especially lesbians to now mainstream literature. She is a woman who had two different lives- after her husband died in 1970 she started a relationship with her life partner Michelle Cliff a Jamaican novelist.

Rich was known to be a feminist and a civil rights activist before she became an openly gay woman, writer, and activist. The “first half’ of Rich’s life she wrote about the female identity basing her perceptions from her life as a wife and mother, and a daughter-in-law. The “second half” of her life she discusses her newly embraced homosexuality along with embracing a political stance for all women- gay or straight. Adrienne Rich’s life was filled with acknowledgements and she received 22 prestigious awards throughout her lifetime.

Rich died in March of 2012, she was 82 years old after long term struggles with rheumatoid arthritis.

Amiri Baraka (born Everett LeRoi Jones) is a well known African-American writer of fiction, drama, poetry, and music. Along with being a writer, Mr. Baraka is also a political activist and teacher who has given lectures throughout Europe, Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States. He was also, for a short time, a member of the United States Air Force. He has appeared in several films as well, usually playing himself.

Born in 1934, in Newark, New Jersey, Mr.Baraka was the son of a lift operator and a social worker. He attended Howard University but left without obtaining a degree and joined the USAF as a gunner. He achieved the rank of Sergeant before in 1957, after only three years of service, he was anonymously accused of being a communist. After an investigation, soviet writings were discovered and Mr. Baraka was promptly discharged from the military. Later that same year, Mr. Baraka got a job in a warehouse for music records which lead to his interest in Jazz. In the late fifties, he and his first wife, Hettie, founded Totem Press, which published Beat icons such as Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg.

In the early sixties, Mr. Baraka began his writing career with essays and poetry. In 1965, after the assassination of Malcolm X, he left his family and moved to Harlem. At this point he considered himself a “black cultural nationalist” and broke away from the Beats who were predominately white. In 1967, during the time when african names were emphasized, he changed his name to Imamu Amear Baraka. This roughly meant “Prince who is a spiritual leader and a blessing.” He eventually distanced himself from black nationalism and became a Marxist. In 1980, he declared himself an anti-Zionist.

For the rest of his life, he traveled around lecturing at different venues and wrote many works. These were generally perceived as controversial. Many of his works called for acts of violence to be carried out against those who were responsible for the unjust society. They were racist, homophobic, sexist, and violent. He was very open about his hatred of certain people groups, but nevertheless he was an inspiration to many and was placed on a list of the 100 greatest African-Americans. He served as Poet Laureate of New Jersey, contributed to AIDS research, and he received multiple honors during his life including an induction into the American Academy of Arts and Letters.

Amiri Baraka died January 9th, 2014 after complications caused by a surgery he had recently had.

(Sources):

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amiri_Baraka

http://www.amiribaraka.com/

Allen Ginsburg was born in 1926 in New Jersey. (His real name was actually Irwin- I can see why he went by Allen.) He was a Beat poet, most known for his poem “Howl”. Ginsburg’s father was a published poet and his mother had some kind of psychological issue that was never properly diagnosed. His mother’s issues (she attempted suicide several times) really inspired a lot of his work, including “Howl”.

Ginsburg went to Columbia College, where he met other Beats like Jack Kerouac and William S. Burroughs. Jack Kerouac also introduced Ginsburg to Neil Cassidy, and they struck up a relationship, which was written about a little bit in On the Road.

One night, Ginsburg was in his room casually reading some poetry by William Blake when he claims that he suddenly heard the voice of either God or William Blake reading Blake’s poetry out loud, which lasted for several days. He says that the vision didn’t come from drug use, but he did turn to drugs to try to recreate the experience.

Ginsberg eventually met Peter Orlovsky in San Francisco, who became his lifelong partner and actually just died a few years ago. Also in San Francisco, where he had his first public performance of “Howl”. “Howl” was extremely controversial (if you read it, you’ll know exactly why) but it was also incredibly popular among the beats.

Ginsburg was kind of all over the place. At one point he was hanging out with a bunch of Beats in France, then he went to England, he dabbled in Buddhism, he helped form the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poets (aka best name for a school ever), helped run protests, and hung out with hippies in the Haight-Ashbury district.

He died from a mixture of several strokes, liver cancer, and hepatitis in 1986, surrounded by friends.

Gwendolyn Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1917, but moved to Chicago with her family when she was still a new baby. She had kind of a rough time growing up. Her father was abusive and eventually died of a drug overdose, and she got suspended from several schools for being black. She eventually went to an all black school, and after that, an integrated high school. This gave her a big interest in race relations. She published her first poem at thirteen in a collection of childrens’ poems. Brooks did a lot of mentoring to young black poets, and also taught college, ran workshops for underprivileged people, and spoke at conferences. She became the first African American to win the Pulitzer Prize and was the Poet Laureate of Illinois. Gwendolyn Brooks used to hang out at the Golden Shovel tavern, where she came up with the idea for “we real cool”. After her death, Terrence Hayes invented a new poetic form in her honor, called the Golden Shovel form.

Craft Response 8

#10

Robert Hayden’s “Those Winter Sundays” is a three stanza, fourteen lines poem. In this poem there is movement throughout the poem that can be followed as a storyline.

The first stanza shows the father of the speaker. This is where this story starts, where the flow of the poem begins. “Sundays too my father go up early,” the speaker tells us in line one. The speaker goes on to tell us that the father lights all the fires so that the house would be warm when everyone else would not be cold when they got up. The speaker tells us that even though the father’s “hands ached/ from labor in the weekday,” (line 3-4) that he made the fires. “No one ever thanked him,” (line 5).

The third and final stanza shows the ending of the poem’s story. The speaker is reflecting almost on the full tale and asks the question, in the final two lines, “What did I know, what did I know/ of love’s austere and lonely offices?” the speaker here is wondering how he could know that his father did this every Sunday for him and never acknowledged it. The speaker never thanks he “Who had driven out the cold/ and polished [his] good shoes as well,” (lines 13-14). To close the story the speaker is now aware of the love that the father felt towards him and the rest of the household because he did this every week for them, now he realizes that love. the speaker realizes that the father got up and was all alone so that he could do this for his family even though they never thanked him for this act of kindness.

In the second stanza the speaker gets the readers from the beginning of the story to the end of it. The first stanza expressed the father’s actions, the last expressed the speaker’s reflections of this action and the second stanza expresses the speakers actions at the time of this loving act. The speaker would wake as the house warmed after the father lit the fires and once his father called only then, “slowly [he] would rise and dress,” (line 8). The speaker gives us a small hint in line 9 that maybe the father wasn’t always so caring by saying, “fearing the chronic angers of that house”. Even though the speaker adds that the father was maybe harsher in the week, on Sundays the father would still rise to warm the house and that is what the speaker remembers. It is the love and care that the father gave, not the harshness or “chronic angers of that house,” (line 9) that the speaker is trying to show through these lines.