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Review: The Story of Phillis Wheatley

ByChristine Norvell

I have long loved teaching the letters and poetry of Phillis Wheatley to high school students, but I have not had the opportunity yet to share her life and work with middle schoolers. Biographer K.A. Ellis is an able and inspiring guide who welcomes younger readers into Wheatley’s life while also offering many spiritual lessons.

From the Gold Coast of Senegambia to a glimpse of village life in 1760, author K.A. Ellis depicts the riches and traditions of West Africa. She imagines the moments of a little girl’s capture and her march through the final fort as she boards the slave ship Phillis with hundreds of slaves of every age.

Colonies of every country were greedy and passed laws to that end. It soon became common to kidnap children and pregnant mothers. The younger the slave, the more years of service. In the graphic reality of this horror-filled trade, Ellis’s chapters make clear that these ship owners and crews had been “blinded by Satan” to see people as cargo. Yet Ellis turns the tide at the end of each chapter and returns to the potential and hope of Phillis’s life to come.

Once the ship is in Boston, seven-year-old Phillis stands on the auction block. Her tribal name has disappeared, and her new owners, John and Susannah Wheatley, are the ones to first call her Phillis. Phillis is quickly befriended by their daughter Mary, and the family educates her at home when she is not doing housework. Learning English and Latin, Phillis writes her first poetry. Here, Ellis’s storytelling shines in her paraphrases of Wheatley’s verses and in the account of Phillis’s coming to Christ at Old South Meeting House.

As Phillis learns and grows as a young woman and poet, she gains the attention of the Countess of Huntingdon. With her patronage, Phillis gains access to publication in America and England while also attracting attention from other educated slaves who write to her. Many of these letters survive today and reveal both what slavery was like and how Phillis and others took courage in Scripture and found friendship in correspondence. Throughout these accounts, Ellis includes extra chapter sections as notes to young readers, like how to read poetry from a different era, what a catechism and baptism is, the popularity of reading at this time, and so on.

Once her first book of poetry is published in London in 1773, Phillis gains fame and a following of freed slaves who desire the same for her. Ellis’s research details the lives of two men, Ottobah Cugoano and Ignatius Sancho, who hope for her freedom and speak openly on behalf of her plight. Ellis clearly shows the tensions present for Phillis. Though she has a good home and many freedoms, Phillis is still “owned” by someone, yet the Wheatleys allow her to travel to London with their son as sponsor. The Countess arranges for Phillis to meet with supporters, and Phillis is able to connect with Christian lawyer Granville Sharp, who specialized in emancipation cases, arguing with biblical and legal reasons for freedom. In 1774, Phillis is freed, and Ellis writes, 

“What a moment that was! She had not run away or purchased her freedom; Phillis negotiated her way to liberty. She stared at the ink drying on the parchment, sawdust scattered about it as it dried. The quill had always been one of her closest treasures [and] . . . in this one trip to London, freedom… all in a short span of time, and all at the stroke of a pen.”

Though she returns to Boston and lives on her own for a time, she moves back in with the Wheatleys as tensions mount with the British. At the same time, Phillis is invited to become a missionary, to return to Africa with others to tell them about Jesus. Unfortunately with her health concerns and with the passing of Susanna Wheatley, Phillis must stay in Boston.

In the most poignant chapters, Ellis details the final years of Phillis’s young life, telling us of her marriage, the hard years of war, and her legacy of faith and freedom before her death at age thirty-one—“She longed for something bigger: a spiritual revolution. She wanted America to find Christ at the center of its struggle, because without him, even a free nation could still enslave others.” 

Throughout her narrative, Ellis is keen to point to Christ and the legacy He was building in and through Phillis Wheatley. As a teacher and parent, I found this Crossway biography thoughtful, inspiring, and full of hope. 

The Story of Phillis Wheatley: The African Poet Who Called America to Christ is forthcoming from Crossway. You can find out more about it here.

Christine Norvell
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