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A Voice of Her Own: The
Story of Phillis Wheatley, Slave Poet
by Kathryn Lasky
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Candlewick Press
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0-7636-0252-3
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$16.99
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In 1761, a young African girl was sold to the Wheatley family in Boston. The
family names her Phillis after the schooner that transported her to slavery.
Kidnapped from her home in Africa and shipped to America, she had everything
taken away from her - her family, her name, her language.
But Phyllis Wheatley was no ordinary young girl. She had an intense desire
to learn, and the Wheatleys encouraged her in this passion, breaking with an
unwritten rule in New England to keep slaves illiterate.
She became a poet, and had a book of verse published. With the publication
of this book, Phillis Wheatley established herself as the first black woman
poet American had ever known. She also found what had been taken away from
her and from slaves everywhere: a voice of her own.
