Phillis Wheatley - "On Being Brought From Africa to America"

Phillis Wheatley was the first published African American poet, as well as the first African American woman poet to influence the creation of the genre of African Americans literature. Wheatley was born in Gambia and made a slave by the age of seven. She was purchased by the Wheatley famil who helped teach her to read and write, while also influencing her poetry. In 1773, Wheatley's poems on various subjects were published and she received high praise, with figures such as George Washington praising her poetry. After the rise in her poetic success, Wheatley was emancipated by her owners and freed, yet she stayed with the Wheatley family until the death of her former master and the disintegration of the famiy.

In Wheatley's poem, "On Being Brought From Africa to America," she talks about the changes she goes through while becoming a slave; going from Africa to America. She portrays a positive attitude because it had introduced her to Christianity. During her enslavement, Christianity was very meaningful to her and provided some light for her life while she was still a slave. Throughout the poem Wheatley does not place a negative emphasis on the aspects of slavery, including the kidnapping, the violence, and the trip on the slave ship. She claims Christianity has a reason for everything, that there is a higher force with more power than humans, God, who influenced the path she had been put on. The faith she kept in her religion had made slavery for her a little more bearable because it provided her with reasons as to why she was in this current state of life. Her focus is mainly on the positives of coming to America rather than the horrors of being a slave.