My Bibliographic Review

        The Atlantic Slave Trade forged the abolition movement of the 1770s in England and in its colonies.  As a result, a repressed, silenced community of black readers and white readers in Boston, Massachusetts would be energized by antislavery debates in the streets and churches there, yet a soft voice with a patriotic heart, named Phyllis Wheatley, would be heard and gain worldwide acclaim. As different countries vied for monopolistic control of the slave trade venture, enslaved Africans, like Phyllis Wheatley made up the centerpiece of the then emerging Atlantic economy. My bibliographic review calls attention to the infamous Phyllis Wheatley, an early writer and poetess of the Black Atlantic, whom effectively brought together diverse populations of people. As author Henry Louis Gates Jr. argues, in the wake of the Cartesian or John Locke philosophy, the subject of black writing was used as an argument for the intellectual enslavement of contemporary blacks. Writers like Phyllis Wheatley became test cases for antislavery and pro-slavery movements as well as monogenic and polygenic racial positions. While former United States of America president, Thomas Jefferson’s disparaging comments on Phyllis Wheatley’s artistic creativity echoed such a claim, the English antislavery writer Thomas Clarkson’s Essay on the Slavery and Commerce of the Human Species (1786) refuted it by defending Wheatley’s work. These early encounters in black literature can be seen as an ongoing process of cultural encounters with Anglo-American languages and ideologies. My essay will trace the rhetorical processes by which black writers, such as Phyllis Wheatley, shape and are shaped by Anglo-American discourses, between black and white writers in the late eighteenth century.

Many writers have collaborated to bring a developing paradigm of thought on the rise of the slave narrative. Paula Bennett similarly considers the shifting nature of such boundaries for Phyllis Wheatley. In Phyllis Wheatley’s Vocation and the Paradox of the ‘Afric Muse’, she articulates the increasing complex position, the coming of the American Revolution placed upon Wheatley. Creatively, it has everything to do with “conservative” and “radical” readings of Wheatley’s poetry, Bennett argues that this political crisis in the British Empire actually disrupted the alliances she had built upon in England during her stay there in the early 1770s.  This forced Phyllis Wheatley to create in her later work a “more complex, pluralistic sense of audience” than before. In Wheatley’s poems she repeatedly alludes to her African origins of present-day Senegal-Gambia.  Yet according to the reading by Bennett, Phyllis Wheatley redeems her oppressive state by making it her source of a religious response to God, and by making God identified as her freedom and sublime (Shields, “Struggle” 230-31; 252-67). It gives her the power to liberate her speech, as she uses her religious beliefs to authorize her pursuit of her vocation.  

Consequently, as poetess she argued against the slave trade and slavery itself when she resided in Boston, Massachusetts of the 1770s. There was much less difficult than overcoming racist failure recognize the fundamentally equal humanity of its African residents, like Phyllis Wheatley. Author, Muhktar Ali Isani agrees, that Wheatley’s arrival back to the American colonies, thus had made extraordinary usage out of being a poet and slave to attract attention to her work. Like some of her contemporaries, such Oladuah Equiano, her poetry was utilizing public opinion of overcoming tyranny. But as Mr. Isani points out, the outbreak of revolution, had “shifted the arena of the cultural crisis from the public sphere of print discourse and polite conversation to the battlefield, and in so doing brought forward old gender barriers”(187). In agreement, Bennett tells us that  “in spite of the demurrers of writers like Abigail Adams and Mercy Otis Warren, the American Revolution understood as a military crisis gave priority to masculine heroics; it did so by reconstructing a separate sphere for women and women’s expression”(17). I believe it resulted in the feminized understanding of virtue.

In conclusion, the world of cosmopolitan friendship envisioned by authors Paula Bennett and Muhktar Ali Isani display her soft, gentle heart of revolutionary poems. But as a woman poet, she is undoubtedly restrained but hopeful for her country. She does not know what her future will give her, and she is diplomatic in her friendships with her friends of England and her friends in the Colonies, but she was also keenly aware of the limits of friendship amid the contingencies of nature and history. It matter little that Phyllis Wheatley may in fact have had few memories of her life in Africa, but her poetic construction of recollection, her validation of the power of memory for the Afric muse, may have in fact energized her prophetic voice. Her declaration of African origin, coming as a rhetorical disruption of the conversation of the British tradition, enabled her consequent post-colonial skepticism about “British Glories”. Phyllis Wheatley: Christian, poetess, mother and wife used her spiritual transformations for the rhetoric of her faith in her people.

My Bibliographic Review will have the following readings and more:

1. "Gambia on My Soul": Africa and the African in the Writings of Phyllis Wheatley

Author(s): Mukhtar Ali Isani

Source: MELUS, Vol. 6, No. 1, Oppression and Ethnic Literature (Spring, 1979), pp. 64-72

Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/467520 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:25

2. Phyllis Wheatley's Vocation and the Paradox of the "Afric Muse"

Author(s): Paula Bennett

Source: PMLA, Vol. 113, No. 1, Special Topic: Ethnicity (Jan., 1998), pp. 64-76

Published by: Modern Language Association

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/463409 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:18

3.

 Re-membering America: Phillis Wheatley's Intertextual EpicAuthor(s): Robert KendrickSource: African American Review, Vol. 30, No. 1 (Spring, 1996), pp. 71-88Published by: Indiana State UniversityStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042095 .Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:23

4. Author(s): Hilene Flanzbaum

Source: MELUS, Vol. 18, No. 3, Poetry and Poetics (Autumn, 1993), pp. 71-81

Published by: The Society for the Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States (MELUS)

Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468067 .

Accessed: 02/05/2011 03:19

Continuation of a thought from essay 5

Equiano's contemporaries often labeled him a black genius positioning him as unique within his race rather than necessarily a representative of his potential of his achievement. It was important then and now, to acknowledge, and to celebrate Equiano's genius. Do you think of those that thought of him as a genius, avoid having to acknoledge the shifting class basis of racial formulations during this time?

essay 5

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness

(Jefferson, Declaration of Independence).

           Happiness, safety, free worship of one’s choice to worship God and good government are forms of freedom? The spiritual climate of the late Eighteenth Century was dictating the climate of the intellectual sensitivities of the century. The French Revolution was grappling these climates into the declared voice of “public opinion”, opening an entirely new voice of one not heard before. “In the Enlightenment world of ’noble savages’, indigenous noble descendants of Aztecs and Incas were overdue for an re-evaluation of their nobility”(Falola&Roberts, pg. 182). The desire of independence from tyranny  was in the will of the new American peoples and many of those that would call themselves Europeans. One such man was Oulaudah Equiano.
    Upon reading The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Oulaudah Equiano, my eyes were open to who he really was.  Oulaudah Equiano was a slave involuntarily, but his life as a sailor was not. He was able to handle himself at any task once on board. There are many similarities between the two, but one difference between them is that slavery involved men and women.  Given that violence has occurred through history, it was the scholarly publication and popularity of a freed slave turned Christian,  that would be the event that would be best fought with civil disobedience. Mr. Equiano’s charge was earned and respected to him. 
According to text’s Sources of Antislavery Thought by Maurice Jackson, “the state of slavery… is neither useful to the master nor the slave, but not the slave because he can do nothing through a motive of virtue; nor to the master because he has unlimited authority over his slaves” ( Faoloa & Roberts, pg. 217). This relationship between slave and master was understood by most Europeans and Africans. Yet was it acceptable?  No, it was not humanely acceptable, but it was a common practice to anyone that could afford a hired hand.

Next, Mr. Equaino’s idea of freedom grew out of this notion. Every Christian understands ultimately what it means in being a Christian, Oulaudah Equiano, embraces in some fashion, necessarily, that he was an evangelist of the Faith. By summation, you want to trace back here, the notion of Christian autobiography, you can trace it back to the Confessions of Saint Augustine. In that text what you have is a historical account of an individual who sort of lives an intellectual life and a phenomenal Christian life. He is tempted and suffers at the deceptive desires of this world. Saint Augustine comes to a moment in his life to be not anxious for this world but for the needs and will of God. In comparison, Equiano, according to his autobiography and many readers,  has  steps in his life that were directed by God, hence could his physical freedom necessitate his spiritual freedom? I believe he was a believer in the faith of Christ Jesus, and he became understanding and had patience to stop the slaughter of human suffering. Consequently, Mr. Equaino professes, in his autobiography, his experiences as human chattel chained to another slave was inhumane and unnatural. “Ideas concerning freedom knew no national or geographical boundaries”, according the Jackson article(pg. 218).
The providence of Jamaica has had a long history of rebellions since the Sixteenth Century. The Jamaican inhabitants caught the attention of most prominent abolitionists in Europe. The European abolitionists were concerned with Christianising the Africans and Jamaicans. European commitment to the abolition of slavery, “to promote the most important interest, the Kingdom of Christ”(pg. 231).  So, according to the new public opinion of the late Eighteenth Century, the institution of human slavery was beginning to fissure under the pressure of abolitionists in Europe and those saved by the prayers of the missionaries who witnessed Christ Jesus’ love for them. But unfortunately these changes would have not occurred until more blood was shed on the battlefields of the American Civil War.

Jefferson, Thomas. “Library of Congress.” Library of Congress. www.loc.gov (accessed 04 14, 2011).
Roberts, Toyin Falola and Kevin D. The Atlantic World 1450-2000. Vol. 1. Indianapolis, ID: Indiana University Press, 1984.

Essay 3

Since olden times, the narrative of Blacks at sea has been tightly strung on the cusp of slavery. Yet has the narrative been true? I believe it to be and according to historian Jeffery Bolster’s Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail, men of descent from the African and Latin American states have been encapsulated in the narrative. These men had sailed the Atlantic Ocean from the times that many Europeans just began to travel to Africa and the New World. Hence were African Americans different from Africans and African Latinos that were discussed in Thornton and in McKnight and Garafalo books? Yes, but the emphasis of this paper is to discuss men of African descent, which were “creole” sailors of the golden age of piracy, which would strengthen the seafaring bonds of many future African American men of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Century. And the new African American sailor or seaman would establish the driving force of freedom for all men and their families, thus the growth and stability of a new nation would begin with the help of the sailor of African descent.
In Jeffery Bolster’s book, he makes the case that African American sailors and seamen should be perceived as Americans first, African "creoles" second. During the golden age of piracy, many men from different countries who wanted to live by their own rules became privateers of merchant vessels. As the treatment of seamen was often cruel and not always certain of a trip back home then these privateers became freedom-fighting pirates. Most pirates lived up to the merciless reputation that was placed upon them. Most would steal and fight for a pirate booty of pieces of eight from the wealthy Spanish Armada, but their system of order or codes had developed into a democratic vote amongst the entire crew of the ship. African and European sailors of the Americas are portrayed in Bolster’s book working “ ‘In honest service quipped Captain Bartholomew Roberts, ‘there is thin Commons, low wages, and hard labor; in this Plenty and Saiety, Pleasure and Ease, Liberty and Power’ “(14). Sailors from Coastal Africa had knowledge of how to work a sailing vessel or smaller sailing craft; so many African men were kidnapped and enslaved by others. Pirates that marauded the Caribbean or Latin America could treat these talented seamen with unkindness, yet it would behoove the captain of a pirate ship, like Black Bart or Bartholomew Roberts, to have an unworkable crew. How could they raid another ship or island for the wealth of its contents? Thus to keep the civility of the ship and gain a pirate booty, in effect, all of the crew had the freedom to choose which task they would complete and they would all vote upon it. The vote of the crew was an amazing concept. This vote of a common man was not permitted in the society of the age, because an official vote had to be made by a gentleman whom was a property owner too. Thus Jeffrey Bolster’s argument of African American “Americanism” is the perception of liberty, as a vote on a pirate ship was the first displayed, repeated behavior of men of African descent. The men of African descent had a strong sense of the sea as a second home. Recall that many tribesmen thought of the spiritual world of the land but the sea- the Kalunga line. The Kalunga line was an invisible line of the distance of one’s soul could travel. Now the sea gave these men of African descent a broader world to discover. New possibilities had became accessed. The possibilities became new power for the men of African descent. No longer the voice unheard. Men like Olaudah Equiano, grew strong from the belly of a sailing vessel. But these new Black Jacks would be the voice crying out in the wilderness to the lost.

Yanni - Reflections of Passion - Enjoy

essay 2

Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, dedication to traditions of scholarship and literary production has ensured that knowledge of the past has survived for hundreds of years. Historian John Thornton argued for Africa’s reputation as self-sufficient, fervent bands of tribes that were keen as free countries or states, who were able to maintain an autonomous financial system, armed services and ethos. These African tribes had no real need to make contact with any European countries. Any relations between the Europeans was an act of charity exhibited by the African leaders and landlords (proprietors). And in the event of war, “judicial enslavement was one way of obtaining slaves, and judges… Jesuit observers believed that this was a common in Ndongo as early as 1600”(Thornton, 99). HThis leads to a very concise question: were Thornton’s views factual of the entire continent of Africa and Africans? In comparison to Thornton’s research, a historical investigation by Garafola and McKnight, was conducted as case studies in their book, Afro-Latino Voices. Their book analyzed sources of investigation of human enslavement of African and Latin American peoples. Garafola and McKnight reviewed and made accesible the letters of an infameous African queen- Nzinga (Dona Ana de Souza), Queen of Ndongo, in their book, Afro-Latino Voices.
According to Garafola and McKnight, the Portugese would establish several settlements, forts and trading post along the coastal strip of Africa. For example, on the island of Mozanbique, the Portugese had created a permenant settlement; as a result, they built the Chapel of Nossa Senhora de Baluarte by the date of 1522. The chapel was built upon the labour of slaves. “Africans responded to the increased demand over the centuries by providing slaves…slavery was wide spread in Africa, and its growth and development were largely independent of the Atlantic trade” (Thornton, 74). Thus Thorton argues that slavery had internal interactions ingrained in the hierarchies of African tribal societies. Directly, trade caused extended slavery and was changed in the large quantity of people becoming enslaved. In agreement, “if it did not take place, might just as been the result of economic growth in Africa, perhaps stimulated by commericial opportunity from overseas, perhaps growing in domestic economy” (Thornton, 91). Considering the associations between Portugese and Africans, as obtained in the case of Queen Nzinga Dona Ana de Souza, a rather self-sustaining African state of tribes is mobilizing away from the Portugese traders and settlers. “African legal systems did ensure security of tenure for petty cultivators”(Thornton, 84). Similar to the sharecroppers of North America, trade between African and Portugese permitted farmers to progress into a form of private labor ownership but not land. This concept of slavery as a humanized investment was equalivalent to landownership in Europe. As noted in Queen Nzinga letters, the kingdom of Ndongo was under constant attack from both the Portugese as well as neighboring agressors. Queen Nzinga realized that, to remain a viable African royal, Ndongo had to reposition itself as an intermediary rather than as a supply zone in the Atlantic slave trade (Thornton, 96-98). In order to achieve this success, she rallied Portugal with Ndogno, in chorus, by acquiring a partner in its fight against its mutual enemies and ended Portugese slave raiding in the Ndongo Kingdom. At Queen Nzigna’s baptism, with the Portugese governor serving as godfather, selaed the the relationship between the two countries. But according to Queen Nzinga’s letters, by 1626, the Portugese would force the Queen out of her government and flee to the state named Matamba, well beyond the reach of any Portugese. Queen Nzinga offersed sabctuary to run-away slaves. To boost the morale of her armed services she adopted a form of military discipline called Kilombo, in which youths renounce family ties and were raised communally in militias. Queen Nzinga, served as governor to Luanda, and created political relationships with allies in the Netherlands. These friendships proved useful as their combined forces were not imsufficient in creating a commericial state that could deal with the Portugese colony on equal footing. According to Garafola nad McKnight, the 1633 trade negoitations, Queen Nzinga offered slaves as a peace offering of future trade between Portugal and Luanda-Matamba. In her letter she states,” accept them as my offering to mollify Your Lordship” (McKnight and Garafola, 51-52). From this point on, Queen Nzinga focused on developing Matamba as a trading power by capitalizing on its position as the gateway to the Central African interior.

Hmm, I wonder

I was thinking about the new topic for essay two. How did you all do on your readings?