Reimagining Phillis Wheatley - Let's Discuss! - BLK LIT

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
My name is Jacqueesse Thomas, and you're listening to Black Lit,
a podcast about black literature and the stories behind the storytellers.
Today we are having a roundtable conversation with thee Tara Bynum,
Associate Professor of English and African American Studies at the

(00:24):
University of Iowa, Cassie Smith, Professor of English and the
Associate Dean for Academic Affairs for the Honors College at
the University of Alabama, and Don Holmes, the Assistant Professor
of English at the University of Pittsburgh. I'm so grateful

(00:46):
to have had conversations with them prior.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
We've heard from all of.

Speaker 1 (00:50):
Them in the previous episodes, and they are here again
in a roundtable conversation about Phillis sweet Lee today. Tara,
Don Cassie, thank you so much for your time and
for being here and spending your time with me again.
We're here to talk about Phyllis Sweetly today. But I

(01:13):
just recently had an interview with George and Johnson, who
has one of the most banned books in America called
All Boys Aren't Blue, which is totally different from what
we're talking about right now, but it is a very
interesting time to see history being erased, books being banned,
and our history being contested in so many different ways,

(01:36):
And I would love to understand how you feel about
that as scholars, as people who have dedicated your lives
to uplifting our stories and seeing it disappearing from headlines, websites, etc.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
I think the question that you have asked is a
multi layered and provocative question, in part because we we
are all at universities, and we're all professors at universities
and at various levels and at various points in our careers.

(02:11):
But I think that what we have in common, whether
we're talking about Pennsylvania, Iowa, or Alabama, is that there
really is a kind of anti intellectualism that threatens the
university and threatens our work. So, you know, I think
that I guess I want to start there because the
stakes actually are really high right now for us as

(02:36):
employees of the institution, and so, you know, I think
that I guess I would want your audience to understand
that this is not a theoretical problem for us, but
one that we have to kind of confront in various
ways in our classrooms, in our interactions with upper administration,
uper administrations, interactions with key stakeholders. So, you know, I

(03:00):
think that this ends up being a very high stakes
question in a very high stakes moment, and there's no
way to kind of like not sort of confront that
part of the question. I think it's really important to acknowledge.

Speaker 4 (03:16):
I think what.

Speaker 3 (03:19):
Kind of interests me about the question is also the
idea of a rasure like go. On the one hand,
like you said, they're people places ideas that are being
kind of literally removed from shelves, literally removed from websites,

(03:43):
literally removed from jobs. And yet, you know, I think
removing someone from an institutional space kind of broadly defined,
it doesn't actually erase the person. It doesn't erase the
memory of the person. You know, I think that it
I think that that is kind of one thing that
we have not figured out as human beings, is like

(04:05):
how to actually erase people. You know, I think we don't,
get me wrong, We've come up with creative strategy to
do wrong in horrible ways by people.

Speaker 4 (04:16):
But I think that there's still a way for.

Speaker 3 (04:21):
People to keep telling stories that is not necessarily institutionalized.
There are ways for the people to hold on to memory.
And I think that That's almost why the push to
a race has to be so strong, because you know,
I think what human beings do across time, across resources

(04:44):
is figure out how to connect with another human being.
And part of that connecting process is storytelling. It's remembering
and so and so, it's remembering a place that no
longer exists. I mean, this is a much more benign
exam But a buddy of mine was talking about a
restaurant in a Baltimore shopping center and I said to her, like,

(05:07):
where the Heckingers was?

Speaker 4 (05:08):
Heckingers has not.

Speaker 3 (05:10):
Been there since I think the early nineties, you know,
like Heckendres is a store, it has not existed for
a very long time. I almost was like, what am
I doing? How bad am I dating myself? And yet
she was like, yes, it's where the Heckings was. She
too knows that the Heckings has been gone since the

(05:30):
early nineties.

Speaker 4 (05:31):
But I guess I just bring that.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Up as a kind of a bend example of something
that has been literally destroyed.

Speaker 4 (05:37):
The building is not there anymore.

Speaker 3 (05:39):
You know, at this point, there probably is a very
specific demographic that can remember where, when, and where the
Heckingers was, and that demographics still exists, so I think
in much more high stake situations, it's also the case
that there are ways to remember.

Speaker 4 (05:56):
Those that have been or those.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
Those persons places ideas that folks want to erase, you know,
there are ways to kind of keep those stories alive.

Speaker 4 (06:07):
And I think that that's what human beings do.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, and then black people in particular.

Speaker 5 (06:12):
Yeah, I mean, like you know, if you just think
about the history of black encounters with the America, like
this effort to erase has been foundational, It's been fundamental,
and one has shaped what is what has become African
American culture. And like, for me, the moment that we're
in right now, in a lot of ways, like it
is so exhausted. I was just having this conversation with

(06:35):
the colleague a couple of days ago, like, you know,
do I just need to you know, you know, grab
my passport and cross borders or what you know, Like
problems follow, But anyway, the point is, for as exhausting
as it is, the one thing that I keep falling
back on is the fact that like we've been here before,
We've done this before.

Speaker 6 (06:55):
You know.

Speaker 5 (06:55):
Phyllis Wheatley was in a moment like you talk about erasire,
like there was no erasire, They're just wasn't visibility, right, So,
like to be erased suggests that you have to first
like be like be present, to have your presence acknowledged.

Speaker 2 (07:10):
And so she's writing in a moment.

Speaker 5 (07:11):
Where just that very fundamental thing of being visible is
an issue, right, And so like we get from that
moment to now having this conversations about culture being erased,
which suggesting that between those who posed between the time
Phyllis Wheatley was in existence in colonial New England to
where we are right now, black folks had managed to arrive,

(07:35):
you know, at this place of visibility, to have the
culture recognized, to have it, to have it in some
ways institutionalized. Right, So now we have Africanistans studies, we
have African American studies, we have you know, professors.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Of early African American literature.

Speaker 5 (07:52):
Yes, And so this idea of trying to erase I
think it's like Tara just said, like it never actually
so we know even in this moment that it is
a losing proposition, and yet it is so difficult, It
is so exhausting just having to work through with and

(08:13):
constantly you know, feeling like we have to constantly fight
this fight.

Speaker 7 (08:18):
A couple of days ago, I was in the media
and someone called me a twentieth century African Americans and
I felt offended. I said, word a man. And now
you know, I barely get past the eighteen thirties, you know.
And the reason why I mentioned that going off Cassie's point,
because Cassie and I met years ago when I was
finishing up my undergrad degree and visited her at Alabama,

(08:39):
and the excitement about my being in early African Americans.
I was just young at that point, so I didn't
think that there were so few of us who are
specifically dedicated to early America but also specifically dedicated to
exposing revealing the early African American experience, which of course
intersects not only but history and other disciplines as well.

(09:02):
And so the reason why we perhaps know each other
because you know, there are so few of us right
in this particular field, but also just few of us
within English studies as a whole. So you at the
end of the day, you tend to meet the other
African American is at you know, one point or another.
But you know, given what we're talking about in this

(09:23):
very you know, impressive historical time that we're living in,
we have to be like weakly ourselves. We have to
be persistent in our dedication to write. Tony Morrison famously
noted that at those moments of pressure is when you
create the most you know. And we can see weekly
engaging those processes since the Boss and Massacre, before the Boss, Semestacre,

(09:44):
actually thinking about issues, thinking about violence, thinking about all
kinds of political, social and religious concerns that she was
interested in well before she was publishing her book in
seventeen seventy three. And so we must become degree odds.
So as people think about erasing history, and we know

(10:04):
so much more right in our brains than we could
ever put in a book than we could ever write
an article, and thus we become the holders of that information.
So as my peers have pointed out, they can't erase
all they want, you know, the historical roadmap points out
that our ancestors have not only been dedicated and persistent
and actually using quote unquote the Master's tools to say something,

(10:27):
but they've been active and inventing and been genitive in
those processes to create new ways of doing things and
so we've been here before, you know, decade after decade,
and thus we're just going to do that same thing
our ancestors taught us. We're going to learn, we're going
to survive, we want to adapt, revise, and we're going
to keep, you know, pressing forward with this important historical

(10:48):
information that really paints a visible picture about who we
are as elation, as a people. You know, without weekly
you can't have that conversation. In my opinion, there's.

Speaker 1 (10:58):
A couple of things that set out to me. You
were all speaking confronting high stakes, eraser versus visibility, and
we have to do as we lead it. I think
that that is all of those three kind of summarizing
lines from what you said. There is a consistency of
that throughout our history in this country, of confrontation, of visibility,

(11:23):
of fighting the good fight. I have to agree with you, Cassie,
though it's so tiring, it's so exhausting just thinking about
it sometime, the idea that this is again, we have
to do this again. And I wonder how do we
protect and preserve Black literary heritage? And you've answered this

(11:46):
question in so many different ways by keep telling our stories,
by keep, you know, being the greats and being the
knowing the importance of our story and being able to
share it and without the fear of it being eraased,
and knowing that it cannot be. However, I wonder, and

(12:07):
this is partially why I even started this podcast, is
how do we encourage students and readers? Because yes, our
disgeneration may be you know, or interested in paying attention,
but if those who would come after us are not,
how do you then encourage those students and readers to

(12:29):
see black literature not just as an academic study, but
a living and breathing cultural inheritance. And I think, like
I said, I think you have all answered that question
to some degree, but something that came up to me
during our interviews. I noticed that everyone, most of you

(12:49):
have said that even your introduction to Wheatly came later,
like during college, like you were more introduced to her
after you reached a certain level of education. How do
we introduce her earlier? And is that important to make
sure that younger generations as early as possible have access

(13:12):
to phill as weekly.

Speaker 7 (13:14):
So I specifically remember being introduced to Wheatly and doctor
Sharita Johnson's African American lit course, and that's when you know,
and of course the African American is here will tell
you can't teach African American literature. We need several surveys
to do that successfully. However, this was what twenty ten's
and that's usually how it was done. And I just

(13:34):
remember thinking to myself, I never heard of this woman.
But in reality, I actually had been exposed to Weekly
prior to college. It was in that cartoon show called
Liberty Kids. There was this animated series that used to
come on PBS. I think about the Revolutionary War, or
the efforts leading up to the revolution at war, and
that was the first time I was introduced to Wheakly

(13:56):
as a kid, but I didn't know it then. It
wasn't you know. It was in inclusive and perhaps romanticized
in the history of the revolutionary effort. Really harkened up
the fact that many of the people in colonial America
saw themselves as colonials. But I think one of the
ways that we can encourage students to see people like Weekly.
For instance, if you're teaching Mississippi at least that's when

(14:18):
you do American history, why not teach George Washington and
Phellis Whetney together. I mean, that's a wonderful way to
kind of start the conversation about who was Feelings Weekly?
Where was she during the Revolutionary War moment? Her poem
and letter to him was very important. Thomas Paine published
it in his Pennsylvania magazine, and it was published and

(14:39):
read before Jefferson's Decoration of Independence, so it played that
document is centered within this important region. It obviously impacted
George Washington so much so that he decided to take
time to write back. So there are many different ways
to have that conversation with students, to place her as
a very active individual within the processes in the Revolutionary

(15:02):
War moment Versus let's discuss Weekly as one of the
black voices in the era, or she comes along the
way down the line in the footnote. When you know,
she could be directly integrated into the conversations within the
classroom so that when students grow up, they're not randomly
discovering eighteenth and early nineteenth century African American writers and
thought readers. You know, that's just one way.

Speaker 5 (15:24):
Yeah, you know, like I'm really thinking about your question
just in terms of like what the stakes are. How
do we keep not just feel this Weekly stored front
and center, but like the history of the cultural history,
the cultural impact of black folks front and center in
this latest move to race, and like you're asking academics,

(15:45):
so the answer for us is always going to be curricula,
Like got to build it into the institution somehow. But
I'm also trying to think, you know, keeping in mind
the larger audience for the podcast, thinking of mind, just
like the broader culture, like what kinds of moves can
we possibly make?

Speaker 2 (16:03):
And you know, I'm not sure.

Speaker 5 (16:07):
Part of me wants to say, just do what we've
always been doing, because like whatever we always been doing,
like we are still here two hundred and fifty years later,
still talking about Phyllis Weekly, even though we have acknowledged
at the beginning of this conversation that there have always
been moves to erase to minimize black culture, and still
yet we're here. Philis Wheatly is still here with us,

(16:30):
And there's been this kind of a thread even in
mainstream black culture from seventeen seventy three with Weekly, where
we have culturally recognized her significance, you know, whether it
was through literary societies or through you know, practitioners of
the arts who have been evoking her work. And so

(16:50):
my short answer to your question to stay the course.
What we've been doing is working. It's continuing to work.
If I'm thinking about it from an academic Standpoard, then yeah,
you know, I'm right on board with what Donn is
saying about introducing this to students as early as possible.
And I was one of those people who learned about
who Philis Wheetly was in grade school, like I was
on maybe six or seventh grade.

Speaker 2 (17:11):
I was in a language arts class.

Speaker 5 (17:13):
Importantly, the teacher of that language oars class was a
black woman, and she had Philis Wheatley on the syllabus
for that class, and that was my first introduction to her.
So that just kind of reiterates what don is saying,
you know, the importance of incorporating this into the academic structure.
But going back to what Tara was staying a few
minutes ago, like we are in this anti intellectual moment,

(17:37):
So that's not going to be the answer for or
We've got to come up.

Speaker 2 (17:41):
With like a multi pronge type approach.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
I think, you know, because I too am you know,
an educator. You know, I thought of curriculum. But you know,
I think that one of the things that I have
thought a lot about is we're also all English professors,
which means that story is a really important part of

(18:04):
what we are interested in. And I think that I
I guess I'll say it this way. I recently had
a conversation with my students about reading and they and
this was not weekly specific, This was just a conversation
about reading and for students who ninety percent of them
raised their hand and said they wanted to be writers,

(18:25):
creative writers. About seventy percent said that they did not read.
And I was like, let's let's talk about this. I
want to understand. And I think what they struggled with
was the book. They had problems with the book, and
you know, they wanted to be able to interface with

(18:47):
stories in different ways in different media, So thinking about
video games, thinking about movies, thinking about all these other forms,
and you know, I think I ended up saying to
them is that, like those forms still rely on writing
that needs to be read.

Speaker 4 (19:06):
You know.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
So like that movie that you love, there's a scriptwriter
or script writers behind that TV show that you like,
the video game, everything kind of has a script and
you know, I think I've realized in talking to them
in that moment, was like, somehow we've kind of undermined
the importance of story. And I don't necessarily know the

(19:28):
trajectory of that undermining, but I think that even in
this important historical moment that we, you know, kind of
are living in and talking indirectly about, I think the
crisis is in part connected to stories and how we
relate to those stories or don't relate to those stories weirdly,

(19:50):
or how we've decided that this story belongs to this
person and not to that person, and not realizing that like,
once the story is in the ether, it has no ownership.
It's something that ends up being kind of consumed, taken in,
interpreted by whoever's ears it lands on our eyes or whatever.

(20:13):
So when I think about how do we get folks
to think about Wheeley and sort of thinking about that
broader than the actual kind of curricular concerns that we've
brought up, I guess I'm I am reminded of kind
of the power of story and helping the next generations
understand that like we are a story driven species, we

(20:36):
need stories, We rely on stories, and there's there's not
quite the kind of insider outsider to story either, you know,
because I think that what has happened, also, interestingly, is
that when it comes to black people's stories, they now
kind of have to look a certain kind of way
for you know, I think students remind me of that.

(21:00):
It's like students in particular, and presumably not just students,
but consumers writ large. They don't want stories about slavery,
whatever that means. They don't want stories of suffering, even
though if we think about what a story is, whether
it's the little Boy who had the no good, very
bad day or Tony Marson's Beloved, like suffering is in it.

(21:21):
I think it's interesting to me the sort of parameters
that my students and others have kind of put around
so called black stories because they have too much of
this suffering. And yet it's like, well, if you read anything,
I think for it to hit there has to be
some level of suffering, there has to be some level
of tension. There has to be something in the plot

(21:42):
that gets us locked in. If my story is that
I went to the grocery store today, no one's going
to read that.

Speaker 1 (21:50):
Now.

Speaker 4 (21:51):
If on the way to the grocery store.

Speaker 3 (21:52):
It turns out I have a no good, very bad
day at you know, like suddenly there might be some
points of interest. So all of this is to say
that I think when we think about Wheatley, when we
think about kind of staying the course in the way
that Cassie mentioned, I think part of the staying the
course is at every turn reminding people that we are

(22:15):
story driven and that stories are meaningful, and that stories
are not specific to groups of people but instead, like
we all have the opportunity to inhabit a story and
to interpret that story, and to make sense of that story,
and to hold on to it in whatever way is

(22:36):
meaningful for us.

Speaker 5 (22:38):
Even like people bring up a good point tower about
the power of narrative, and like where our current generation
of students are, particularly black students by who are who
don't want more of the stories about black suffering, And
that may be something that is exceptional about the moment,
And it's like the farther we get from you know,

(23:00):
let's say the civil rights movement or from general Crow.
Like I was just watching something recently where it said
that like my generation, so like older millennials, like younger
gen X, older millennials are actually the first generation of
Black Americans who are truly free in American culture. So

(23:21):
like in the sense that like we don't have to
Like my mom will tell you stories about how when
she was a child, she had to step off the
sidewalk when white people paying right, right, So like, but
I don't have those stories. Or you know, she graduated
from a segregated high school, and this was in the seventies.
Like segregate, you took a long time to happen, y'all
in the South.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
I didn't graduate from segregrated high school, right, So, like
my generation is.

Speaker 5 (23:43):
The first one when you think about the struggle where like,
you know, we've had the legal protections. You know, a
lot of the institutional like some stuff for equality and
equity has been institutionalized.

Speaker 4 (23:57):
Right.

Speaker 5 (23:58):
So now to maybe one or two generations after that,
we have these students who coming up and they come
into our early African American LAN classes and like for me,
when I teach the we now have two sections of
African American lit. This goes back to what Donald was saying.
One goes from the beginnings up to nineteen thirty five,
So the end of the Harlem Renaissance, and then the

(24:20):
second one is from nineteen thirty five to the present.
Right when you come into my class and I'm teaching
African American literature, one like, we're going to spend the
first twelve weeks of the semester going from like fifteen
fifty to about eighteen twenty, so we got a bunch
of text and conversations about the Transatlantic slave trade, and

(24:40):
about four weeks in, students are like, man, you know,
when are we going to get to like Tony Morrison.

Speaker 2 (24:45):
Never, that's not what's in this class.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
And so it's just this idea that like, I don't
there's something about the students we're currently teaching where they
feel like conversations about African American history don't have to focus.

Speaker 2 (25:03):
On like they want the good time stories.

Speaker 5 (25:06):
And I'm like, yeah, there is a we have some
of that, you know, Like I mean, I can we
talk about some funny stuff that happens, for example, with
you know, Frederick Douglas or whatever. But I mean, at
the end of the day, this is part of the history.
This is the foundation for where we are right now.
But the kind of hesitation for students to engage the

(25:27):
material right now.

Speaker 2 (25:30):
Is really tricky and it.

Speaker 5 (25:33):
Can be problematic in this moment where there's this push
for cultural erasure, because it suggests there's some complicity on
all sides to move toward this seriation.

Speaker 2 (25:43):
Because now people don't want to have those conversations.

Speaker 5 (25:45):
It's like we forgot, well not forgot, because I like, again,
my generation and younger, we haven't had the experience of
walking off the sidewalk when a white person passes because
we just we didn't have to do that.

Speaker 1 (25:59):
That makes me wonder, are like, Okay, so the students
at your teaching the age range is under twenty years
old approximately, would you say, or twenty four or ninety.

Speaker 7 (26:11):
Thousand, two thousand and sixty thousand and seven born dates around.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
To some degree, they haven't even watched or learned about
the struggle.

Speaker 7 (26:23):
These are the students who use late twentieth century to
describe the nineteen nineties. Okay, so this is what we are,
this is what we're dealing with.

Speaker 4 (26:32):
Eighteen hundred nineteen.

Speaker 7 (26:37):
I said, the nineteen nineties were not that long ago
for you to give it that kind of designation. Come on,
But I love this point about storytelling, right because when
I walk into my classroom, and I'm about to teach
you this slave narrative and this experience about this individual
who had a horrific experience in slavery. I suppose that
some students have the expectation old black people, Oh my god,

(27:02):
they suffered so much, you know, that is all Those
things are valu only true. But my gain for them
is to expose to them how those systemic pressures, even
though they were so thick, they were not so thick
enough that these individual examples that we have couldn't subvert them,
which suggests to me that others were subvert and even
though it's not necessarily in the record, which also gets

(27:24):
us to where we are today. So I remind my
students that if your ancestors accepted slavery, then you would
still be on the plantation in Mississippi and in South Carolina, right,
And so it's important for them to understand how the
enslave individual never accepted that position, even though it took
decades for them to reconcile and resolve it. They were

(27:46):
active in that process since the seventeenth century. Before the
end prehaps but specifically since the seventeenth century, they had
been dedicated to processes that were about enacting freedom, and
they're establishing what I like to claim about certain coaches
practices that later African Americans would then start to use
in their writing, but then continue to go on using

(28:07):
in their everyday practice. Right, Genevra Smithman had said this
wonderful thing about nothing works without the words, without language.
Everything starts with the story, with how people have been
told to survive and all those different things. So we
can expect some of those things we're still being passed down.
But how we invite students to the narrative and exposing

(28:29):
them to early America. I think he settled, perhaps even
that's the word I'm looking for here, not be stabilized.
This armed them, if you will, when it comes to
the kind of barriers that they've set up about, Oh, slavery,
and I let them know, this is early America. Slavery
is going to be intersected. Even in takes that are
not specifically about slavery, We're going to be talking about

(28:50):
it because it was a normalizing parameter at that time.

Speaker 1 (28:57):
You are listening to black.

Speaker 3 (29:02):
I also think it's important to I guess, wrestle with
the shame that seems to be part of the disinterest
right now. There's a lot of shame around it, particularly
for I think black young people, in a way that
I never learned. And I'm also like an exennial elder millennial,

(29:22):
you know, so I did not grow up.

Speaker 4 (29:26):
Thinking that.

Speaker 3 (29:29):
My parents' generation was shameful or that my grandparents' generation
was shameful. But I do think that students now, their
refusal to hear the slavery stories and the desire to
get away from suffering, I think it is aligned with
a certain amount of shame. And I think that the

(29:51):
for reasons that are not clear to me, you know,
the shame becomes the burden of the descendant of the
black and slave person. Shame is not something that the
descendants of slave owners have to wrestle with, you know,
like it becomes our burden. And you know, I agree
with the idea that somehow that makes us complicit in

(30:14):
the a rasure. Yeah, I think I think shame is
is definitely a part of the story. And I'm not
entirely sure how you go from my parents, who are
likely the grandparents of my current students, like you know,
like and to think that like what my my parents

(30:38):
as like the youngest in the civil rights generation, like
go from them to their imagine grandchildren being kind of
ashamed that they had to endure segregation or had to
figure out ways to combat it. And then if you
go back even further, like there's still shame around what

(31:00):
previous generations had to endore as well. As a student
was she wasn't a black student, but we were talking
about segregation, and she was kind of like, why did yeah,
why did black people say yes to this or like
allow it to happen? And you know, there's always moments
in the classroom that are like, it's just Tuesday.

Speaker 4 (31:20):
I was mine in my business.

Speaker 3 (31:22):
I did not wake up this morning to answer this
version of a question.

Speaker 4 (31:26):
But I've figured out how to answer it.

Speaker 3 (31:31):
And the thing that kind of struck me in my answer,
My answer kind of spoke to the authority between me
as the teacher and her as the student. And I
think when I pointed out my authority and the fact that,
you know, I could give her directives that she then
would do without the threat of death or job loss

(31:53):
or anything, she could say no to me, you know,
because the stakes are super low. But she didn't say no,
And I think that was a moment where a light
bulb kind of went off to have her thinking about
like the fact that we are talking about real systems
and real consequences, like not just a complicity because somehow

(32:14):
black people are less than or whatever, you know. So,
you know, I think that that is what we are
we as educators certainly, and also I guess it's everyday
folks are kind of wrestling with right now.

Speaker 4 (32:25):
Is the shame you.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Know, students, students and other young people may not necessarily
have the same sort of interactions, but the legacy of
some of these things, there's still a through line. There's
still you know, kind of these conversations that are happening
and still impacting and affecting them and maybe affecting them

(32:52):
without as much context. So like when it's your mother's
generation kind of sharing those stories, it's a different kind
of conversation than when it's your grandparents generation sharing or
maybe not sharing those stories, because there's been enough distance,
there's been enough time that those experiences aren't top of

(33:13):
mind for the grandparent in a way that they might
have been for the parents.

Speaker 4 (33:17):
So I think that that's just interesting too.

Speaker 7 (33:20):
This is the through line that we've all been talking
about we've been here before, and as those of us
in the room, who are you know, culture and story
to explored at some horrific times in African American history,
you know. And as I try to teach to my students,
I try to express to them that a history is
under no you know, obligation to make sense to us

(33:41):
unless we make it make sense. But also the future
is under no obligation to be better, you know, and
history just explicates how it's just been, you know, one
great difficulty off of the next, not just for African Americans,
but when you think about it, you know, the world,
you know over and so you know, it's I think
about how we've been taught this history, this romanticized version

(34:02):
of American history, the quote unquote the bad part. So
what did they say, the dark history? And so maybe
the issue has been especially around these concerns around shame,
and perhaps even I had a student apologized to me
for slavery his ancestor and then a slave owner. You
could you imagine my face when that question came up.

(34:22):
I gave him one of those those profound, you know,
aerodyne answers about you were responsible for your own future?
Kind of thing. But I think that because we've taught,
for instance, we've taught the revolutionary moment, oh, certain paradoxes
and certain contradictions, right, which, in my mind logically that
suggests that, oh, it was a mistake. It was you know,

(34:44):
they were kicking it down the road. It was eventually
going to get to it. But when and how? Right?
In other words, these things were intentionally done throughout history,
bad things had intentionally been done by people in power.
And because we've not assessed those power structures and how
those that work themselves into systems, we today in the
twenty first century are debating whether or not the system

(35:06):
is problematic versus actually having conversations about how these entrench
values have been so you know, structured in our systems
that we are trying to you know, dismountle those kinds
of processes. And and a lot of it's because so
many people have just been taught you know, the greatness
or you know, the exceptionality, if you will, about our

(35:26):
country's history, the history of the world. And thus when
you go into your classroom and you're exposed to them
these hard truths with the actual documentation, you know, on paper,
it can be very as one Grass student put it,
that knowledge can you know, we'd like to think about
knowledge as power, but it can also be pained as well.
And so some of the students are dealing with how

(35:48):
did I get to college and didn't know this? How
did I get to this morning my life and I
didn't know this? And so that shame they feel is
from that the information itself, but from the lack of
the fact that it know it already or that no
one had taught them that already, you know. And so
I think all of that contributes to how they feel.
You know. Now with these great efforts of eracia, I think.

Speaker 5 (36:11):
The then of a conversation about shame is even more
complex than than that. So, like it's you know, about
not knowing some of this history, and then another part
of it is because I mean, even though what happened
in the post Obama era contradicts it, I still think
that at this moment there are a lot of us
who are working with this idea that we were that

(36:33):
we were in some kind of post racial moment, or
that we were moving toward it, right, And so then
having all of these reminders about what has happened in
the past just literates the fact that Okay, maybe it's
not post racial, like maybe there is something that makes
me exceptional that I stand out, but not necessarily in
a positive way.

Speaker 2 (36:53):
Right.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
I do want to say as well, that there's a
part of me that sees the moment that we're in
right now as a gift, a gift in the sense
that we can no longer take for granted anything we've
ever thought about the United States, the good, the bad,
and the ugly, all of it. Right, and so we
have decide, oh, you know, this is a grandness democracy

(37:15):
that ever existed.

Speaker 2 (37:16):
In the history of the world.

Speaker 5 (37:17):
And yet here we are right now with a person
who has dictatorial ambitions and god, it looks like there's
an old map that's just.

Speaker 2 (37:26):
You know, guiding him right there.

Speaker 5 (37:28):
Even though we know that executive orders are not laws,
not laws, every time he signs once we act like,
oh my gosh, the Department of Education is now no more.

Speaker 1 (37:38):
No, that's not.

Speaker 5 (37:39):
Exactly what's going on, But that's how we talk about it,
that's how we act, that's how we are, and that's
really I think, well, that's one of the things that
this administration is counting on. It is counting on being
able to speak something into existence and or speak it
out of existence or it to become reality. So that's

(37:59):
how this erasure thing is working in this moment. And
so the reason I'm saying this as a gift is
because it's we don't have room for the anti intellectualism.
And I'm not even talking about institutionally. You don't forget
about the university and going to school and getting the college.

Speaker 2 (38:15):
It's about critical thinking and it is existential.

Speaker 5 (38:20):
Right, I mean, like if we are not being if
we are not willing to just kind of take a
step back and be able just to you know, think rationally,
then we are going to be consumed by this. And
you know I was talking about how exhausting all of
this is, like we will be overwhelmed by it. So
as we kind of think about the kind of shame

(38:42):
that is defining some of our younger generations, as we're
thinking about this moment that we're in, as we're thinking
about this project of erasure, we also need to be
thinking about what it means to confront all of these
myths and these ideas that we've had in the past
about us exceptionalism and be willing to confront them as such,

(39:03):
I think that is so fundamental to us getting to
the next step, or get getting beyond this political moment.

Speaker 7 (39:10):
In other words, just helping students to understand that all
these things about as people say, where we are supposed
to be, how we are supposed to be, x, y,
and z, we just won't get there right without fully
and truly understanding who we are. There's so many grievances
in our historical past that just it's not that reconciliation
is giving me something right, It's reconciliation means knowing and

(39:34):
being more informed that even though we maybe different and
that difference exists amongst us, that difference should not immobilize.
It shouldn't force us to become so you know, fear,
fear becomes the provocation, and fear matches how people feel
or they go and they vote, and those fears then
go right into policy, right, or what have you. And

(39:56):
so I just think it's important that we know more
about each other, and that means just being exposed to
the history and not having to qualify with an adjective
dark history. Good history is just history, right, it rocks
you know one it just it just exists. And so
therefore we have the potential to know more about ourselves,

(40:17):
you know, as a people who would you know, be
talked less exceptional history, if you will.

Speaker 1 (40:24):
And when I interviewed Bridget Fielder, one of the things
that she mentioned was that, you know, after Phyllis Wheetlee,
there was like a major gap between Phyllis Sweetly and
zero no Hearston and of intellectual women writers. That's a
big gap. And that's a huge gap as far as

(40:45):
like who are the women, the black women writers during
that time and were they celebrated, were they highlighted? Were
they were they as are we do we see them
in curriculum as we see Phillip Wheetley ortent. It makes
me think about how do we stop that from happening
again in our curriculum, in our studies and our teachings,

(41:06):
for these these gaps not to occur again, as far
as like in our school systems and the women that
are highlighted during that time period in the nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (41:16):
Yeah, don't get no.

Speaker 4 (41:19):
Love, no love.

Speaker 3 (41:20):
You know.

Speaker 7 (41:22):
Love God is doing now.

Speaker 4 (41:29):
Right, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:30):
I think that it for me kind of goes back
to the idea of story and like needing to tell
the story of black people in a very particular kind
of way.

Speaker 4 (41:43):
So, you know, I think that that the generation the
boomers who.

Speaker 3 (41:49):
End up being have the the black folks that get
to white universities in these large numbers and then go
on to graduate school to get PhDs at fancy places
like that kind of I don't know that they have
a name, but you know, I think there's a cohort
of folks that I'm sure that we could all think

(42:10):
of who who were in the position to kind of
add validity to African American literature as a category. And
I think that the way they get to that abidity
is using kind of high theory to interpret African American
literature and also figuring out how to include African American

(42:32):
literature courses in the curriculum in English departments across the country.
And I think that their work is invaluable, like this
is why I have a job now. But I also
think that one of the kind of consequences of the
need to make African American literature sort of a part
of the curriculum is meant that there's a particular kind

(42:53):
of story that we expect when it comes to what
counts as African American littercy.

Speaker 4 (43:00):
So like Wheely is the start.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
I think she often is the you know, kind of
the unique, the first, the miraculous, the only, and I
think the nineteenth century it ends up being kind of
a tricky time, and it is not a century that
I know a whole lot about. I reject it. I
have my reasons, but that's not what we're here to

(43:24):
talk about, you know. So I wonder kind of the
gap that Bridget identifies. I wonder how much that gap
is a part of having kind of a having in
developing an African American literature curriculum. They can then be
anthologized in an easy way that kind of like does

(43:44):
the work of narrating resistance, narrating kind of black creativity
in a particular kind of way that then could allow
it to be marketable to the institution, both the publishing
houses but also the academic institutions that would then sort
of validate African American literature as a field. So now
I at least my first thought about why there is

(44:08):
that gap, you know, I wonder how much of that
is kind of connected to the story that African American
literature as a cannon as a tradition is supposed to represent.

Speaker 7 (44:22):
A great scholar wrote a book and several lines in
this book, but one of the lines she put in
there was that we can rethink authorship. Come on, you
know what I'm going with this cast. We can rethink
authorship without having to, you know, forego the quote unquote
role or the author, but to extend how we are
thinking about African American literature and looking at other texts

(44:43):
that you know, aren't quote unquote a fiction, a piece
of poetry. And of course that scholar is Cassieu Smith.

Speaker 2 (44:49):
So set me up.

Speaker 5 (44:55):
Just real quick, you know, in this conversation about eracial
I just feel compelled to just say, Mariah Stewart, Frances
Elan Watkins, Harper, Harriet jacob Anna, Julia Cooper, Nacy Press,
you're really you're your foot. I mean, we can do
like a laundry list of black women who were writing
and who were intellectuals in the nineteenth century. So this

(45:19):
really gets at the point that Bridget is alluded to
and what we can talk about here about erasure and
why there might be that eration in the nineteenth century.
I think what's really interesting is that that erasure takes
on a very gendered dynamics, specifically in terms of the background,
because like nobody has like we all know who Frederick,
Like if you don't know anybody else in early African

(45:40):
American nature, you know Frederick Douglas and no Booker T.

Speaker 2 (45:44):
Washington problem.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
So like if nothing else you can you can name
some black men writers from the period, so that there
isn't that huge leap from the eighteenth century into the twentieth.

Speaker 2 (45:55):
But it's not necessarily the case with black women.

Speaker 7 (45:58):
I wanted to add to that, and especially when it
comes to you know, black women writers. There are so
many important ways to think about like, for instance, that
letter from Virginia on that plantation, I think it was
a woman that wrote it. I don't know why I
feel I do. I just because when they're advocating for children,
women always advocate for children. That's something that's very central,

(46:20):
and I just I don't know if a male writer
would have have taken that level of advocacy to kind
of fight for their progeny the way that a woman
would have. And the historical the rhetorical record at least
plas that out. Women have always been interested in describing
thinking about their children in ways that men getting perhaps
in the ways that men could perhaps use them, and

(46:43):
or perhaps the way that men talk about their children
as just part of the family, or some to this effect.
But the nineteenth century, though, is full, I mean full
of African American thought, intellectual thought, historical thought. The slave
narrative oftentimes gets to be the bulk of the tradition webpalme,
which we think about African American writer of the nineteenth century.

(47:07):
But the first sustained writing campaigns from African Americans were
these published orations from eighteen oh eight to about eighteen
twenty three, and so every year in Philadelphia, New York
and New York they would give these speeches, like two
or three of them. And then there was a sister
tradition that started in Boston and by eighteen fifteen, I think,

(47:27):
but it was primarily with like white creatures. But nevertheless
they I mean records of documents and pamphlets and speeches.
Not only that, we have petitions that African American people
were using other eighteenth century. These things could be used
as literary you know, documentation as well. That could help us,
you know, understand a lot more about African American cultural

(47:51):
expressions by the time we get to what eighteen thirty,
you get the first fusion of slave narrative in eighteen
twenty five. So there's so much, you know, informations from
African American people, even well prior to the abolition of slavery.
The first what fiction we believe is that Haitian story. Yeah,
I don't know if you're all noticed Theresa from eighteen

(48:13):
twenty eight, right, is that like eighteen twenty eight something
like that.

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Yeah, And it's serialized in Freedom Journal too, right.

Speaker 7 (48:19):
Right, yeah, yeah, I think so, yeah, which is a
black newspaper. So it's so in other words, I guess
what I'm getting at, And this follows Cassie's work and
Zach's work. But what I'm getting at is that we
have to look back for African American life in texts
that we otherwise wouldn't be thinking about looking at, So
from the newspapers, from other types of I had a

(48:42):
student just wrote an archival paper about the first black doctor,
and he used the obituary in order to recover this
man's history. Right, so the obituary becomes the literary document, right,
it becomes something that holds his life and it shows
how his African American community thought about him, and these
are important documents that could help us understand the fullness

(49:03):
of this, you know, the nineteenth century in particular Earth.

Speaker 2 (49:07):
That's the storytelling. We keep coming back to.

Speaker 1 (49:09):
It, similarly to the letters from Phillis Wheetlely to over
Tanner and to the letters overall, how that became a
part of her story.

Speaker 3 (49:17):
Don't get me talking about account books, because that's another
genre that we never talked about, even you are listening
to black lit.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
One of the things I also found to be beautiful when,
like researching, I came across, you know, poems of people
who wrote, they wrote poems about Phyllis Wheatley's life before
coming to America and what they thought that was like.
And Cornelius E who was also on the first episode,
he shared one of his poems. So I think there's

(49:52):
influence in so many different ways of finding the story,
as we were saying, of understanding the story before the
story that we know, and because obviously we won't ever
know what truly was, but having that beautiful imagination to
kind of fill in those blanks and write those poems.
But I wanted to switch gears a little bit and
talk to Tara about reading pleasures.

Speaker 4 (50:14):
You invited.

Speaker 1 (50:15):
Your book is the reason that we started this. So
I thank you again for that, and Jason shout out
to you, our producer. But I think that is kind
of answering some of the questions that we have too,
like how do we bring these stories that are set
in a certain time period which is a struggling period
for black people and a struggling time and a hard time.

(50:37):
But you were able to find the joy and rethink
that black interiority and showing Wheatley not just as this
figure of resistance, but showing her pleasure and showing her
joy and sharing that and making that the forefront of
the story. And it's funny because I was thinking when
you said this. I thought this to myself the other day,

(50:57):
and I was like, if we've made a film of
about Phyllis Sweetly, what would need to be included?

Speaker 2 (51:04):
And how yeah?

Speaker 6 (51:07):
Right?

Speaker 1 (51:07):
Like what would absolutely need to be included, Like what
would be the first act, what would be the second?
And also how important it would be to show the joy?
Because I don't and I might be wrong. I watch
a lot of films, but I don't know if I've
ever seen that perspective when it comes to that time
period or slavery. Yes, the environment will still be there,

(51:30):
the war that the pain, the suffering will still be there,
but being able to tell it through that lens of
joy is kind of really really beautiful And I love
that that's the perspective that you took. But would you
could you answer that question like, if you were to
make a film about philis weekly yeah, I'm going to
We're going there, do you think would need to be

(51:52):
included and to her story?

Speaker 3 (51:54):
I think that's a really interesting question. And also like
I'm not a screenwriter, no idea, but I think that
if I am, you know, done, And Cassie chime in
with your thoughts too, But I I think that the
one and this this might be controversial, but I stand
by it. The one movie that I can think of

(52:17):
that kind of does this is Django. Yeah, so I
think Django there's a love story at the center of
you know, like Jamie Fox wants to wants to.

Speaker 4 (52:30):
Fight his wife.

Speaker 7 (52:32):
It's a love story.

Speaker 3 (52:33):
It's a love story, and I think what's interesting about
it is that like at its center, it's almost like
a princess story, Like the woman gets saved by the
Knight and shining armor or whatever, and we can we
can you know, do work with that. But like I
think at base, it's a love story and it's a
victorious one in the end. So I think that for

(52:55):
the Wheekly story, the question would be, like what it
is the motivating something, you know, like, would you want
to tell it as a love story and kind of
center John Peters? Would you want to tell it as
a friendship story and think about the various sort of
friendships that Wheatley has. But I think that that ends

(53:15):
up being kind of the way to shape the story
that then allows the world to do what the world
is doing. Because we have to talk about the revolutionary war,
we kind of have to talk about her enslavement. But
I think that remembering that she is a friend, a wife,
or you know, like is something other than enslaved or

(53:38):
in addition to being enslaved. Like, I think that that
is what I would want the story to kind of
center on. And I think that what Jango does well
is kind of make clear those power dynamics. Like I
think that the I think Tarantino doesn't sidestep those power dynamics,

(53:58):
and you know, I think is gory and all kinds
of things, but I think he doesn't lose sight of
the fact that he's telling a love story. So, you know,
I know that Tarantino can inspire all kinds of feelings
in folks, but in my mind, he would kind of
be the model sort of like three dimensional like he

(54:19):
he he models what a three dimensional kind of black person.

Speaker 4 (54:24):
Can be in in Django.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
You think that, I mean, here's the thing, casting we
can't go too deep, like, let's not let's not do that.
Like I understand that this is controversial and problematic, and
you know, we got we got big old brains that
Kim can ken. You can put forth a critique, but

(54:49):
I do think that there is something about just of
the existing models that I've seen, Jengo is probably the
best one. Yeah, and I see that knowing, knowing that
you're right, Cassie, this is not There are far better
representations of black men and women than Tarantino's Dango. But

(55:13):
if I'm thinking about a story that's set during slavery
that is meant to represent, you know, kind of black
people at that time, Yeah.

Speaker 1 (55:24):
It puts the love story at the forefront, and that
to drive the story that he wants to tell.

Speaker 7 (55:30):
Well, there's the whole issue in Django. And this is
one of the things that Bill Andrews and I chatted
about when it came out, the horse issue. Why is
this black man on the horse? That was a crime?
Black men could not ride horses, and so just planning
on that absurdity that how ridiculous is that law, How
ridiculous is that rule? And Tarantino is known for his aperbo.

(55:53):
He's known to extravag you know, to be really, you know,
out of this world, you know, in terms of speaking
to the absurdity of whatever it is that he's trying
to represent. But it's like those little nuanced things that
he puts in the movie, and that helps us as
yours find it out to know that slavery is here
and this is a very violent tradition. But this man

(56:14):
is dedicated to finding his damsel in distress and saving her.
I used to tell this a whole story about a
nineteenth century movie that I would love to see. It
would be The Avengers, Okay, of the nineteenth century. John
Brown is going to be Captain America. Come on, Frederick
Douglass is going to be back at the Harriet up man,

(56:35):
you know what I'm saying, So listen, this will be
your great you know, fictional, of course, ridiculous, speculatively movie,
you know, but that's what they were. They were the
Avengers of the nineteenth century. They didn't have all the
tools and technologies like the ones we see in the
modern movies, but they were literally trying to fight and save,
you know, people's lives. But a movie about Wheatley, though

(56:56):
I don't know how do I feel about I would.
I would feel some kind of I'd be like, oh,
they're going to mess up our history. They're gonna put
all kinds of claims in there that probably isn't true.
I don't know, but I would be on edge. Would
I go and view it? I would, but I would
love it if they would focus it on I'm just
really interested. I feel like her interactions in Boston sometimes

(57:19):
get kind of misrepresented, and so when people when she's
getting to you know, selecting George Washington, I'm gonna send
you this poem and letter and say I support the
American colonials, people are like, why did she do that?
Why didn't she you know, stay in England when she
was in England? And I think a lot of that
bears fruit from her colonial experiences. So I would love

(57:40):
for the movie to kind of really represent some of
those interactions that she was having on the streets that
are in and around Boston right after the French and
Indian War, and thinking about when she first got here,
what was she was seeing, and you know, imaginations about
those early years would be so so very interesting to
me because I think they play a very important role

(58:01):
to her ideology development by the time she's writing George
Washington in seventeen seventy five, short amount of time, but
I think very impacting on her her young life for
formative years.

Speaker 1 (58:13):
In other words, I think, you know, honestly, when I
fool the question to myself, the first thing that came
to my mind as far as like who she was,
the perspective that I would want to see is a
story of self worth. I think she really knew who
she was and valued that because her tenacity to write

(58:36):
the letters to go after to get her work out,
Like there's such a beautiful story of knowing value and
knowing that she had value despite being a slave, you know,
And I think that that could be a really really
beautiful leaning into the joy leading into the self worth,

(58:56):
leading into this woman who was in some regards to
aunt yourepreneur because she was selling herself, right, she was
selling her work and doing what she had to do.
So I would love to see that in that way,
of course, with all the things that were happening around her,
but somehow making that be what drives the story, this

(59:18):
beautiful black valued woman at the forefront and never never, never,
just just unapologetically, never wavering, you know, and even contesting
anyone who who thought otherwise.

Speaker 7 (59:34):
And think about how brave she I mean Weakley, I
mean she could have wrote anyone who she wanted. She
wrote people who were slave owners. Selena Hayesen's had owned slaves,
this mystery.

Speaker 1 (59:44):
You know.

Speaker 7 (59:44):
She wrote people who clearly she felt that she could help.
She wanted to teach them, right, you know. And I
have here, Terry. You read the last time, so I
want to read a little truth. You read Paul Blast time.
I remember I was I don't know I could read.
I was listening and I was like, oh, this is

(01:00:06):
after she comes back from London. Right, So Poems on
Various Subjects is published. This is in seventeen seventy four,
and she writes to Samson Ocumen. She says, among many
of the things she talks about equating herself to the
modern day jew as in the modern day Egyptians, as
in the white oppressors. So she's presenting to him in

(01:00:27):
this letter her very poignant interpretation not only about faith,
but also about the actual issues within the world. And
she's coming to realize that the great difficulty is that
it is white people who perhaps have has its opacity
to see how humanity could be expanded. She says this,
I desire not for their hurt, but to convince them

(01:00:48):
of the strange absertainty of their conduct. Whose words it's
not the conduct is there, but whose words and actions
are so diametrically opposite. In other words, the logic ain't
loge that she's seeing here, and she's trying to, you know,
instruct these people. So she's very didactic, you know. And
I claim in my word because I'm trying to develop

(01:01:10):
that she she's positioning herself as this great humanist. Right,
she's impacted by militronic poetry, she's impacted by Alexander Dunn's
you know, piety and all these different kinds of English writers.
That she's reading, but then the actual traumatic experiences on
the ground don't match all that, the ideals about liberty
don't match all the ideas about being good Christians, right,

(01:01:31):
And she's you know, very concerned about that in that
post trip to London, which becomes part of what she's
trying to animate and show to the world. She was
a powerful, remarkable woman. You know, oftentimes people say that
some of these people were ahead of their times. I
think she was right where she was supposed to be.
How unfortunate in her life ended, how unfortunate it was.

(01:01:52):
But I feel that she presented so much stock and
gave so many ideas that would be so helpful for
future generation just to kind of understand and use that.
I think in so many ways too, she helps to
kind of create and structure some African American cultural core
ideas about our peaceable nature and that we do not
walk around with a vengeful heart. And Weakley was really

(01:02:15):
into all of that stuff. And you know, so therefore
she deserves to be honored for that all because she
had every right to be mad as hell at this
world that she was tossed into, you know, wish not
to say that she was in of course, but you
know what I mean, I want to stop preaching now.

Speaker 5 (01:02:32):
Well on one thing that we might want to point
out to is that for like as remarkable as Philis
Whetly was, she was also quite ordinary. So you know,
if we're thinking, and not to take anything at all
away from Phyllis Wheety, but to point out that what
she was able to do, how she was able to
speak truth to power, how she was able to, you know,

(01:02:52):
to acquire litisy skills in English and write poetry.

Speaker 2 (01:02:56):
She was not acting in isolation like she wasn't this
just out there.

Speaker 5 (01:03:02):
So I don't know whatever kind of movie production we're
gonna do or whatever, like, it would just be useful
to kind of focus on those parts of her.

Speaker 2 (01:03:10):
That may not be so heroic.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
And I don't know what that y'all. You know, y'all
still got me messed up with the jangle. I know,
I know there's something in any kind of move like
I would just want to remind herself like she was
an ordinary person too, right, Like she wasn't. Yeah, she
was ordinary person too, And that's important to acknowledge, just
so that we can always carry along that humanity and

(01:03:36):
just the complexity of it, right, because like, if we
start to think about her in these like really revered terms,
we kind of, for example, we don't think about the complexity,
for example, and the relationship between her and her enslaver,
Susannah Wheatley. It becomes really really difficult to think about
how she felt about her mistress, why she may have

(01:03:57):
felt that way about her mistress.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
If we are reminding ourselves.

Speaker 5 (01:04:01):
That she was you know, just origined being who did
some really extraordinary things.

Speaker 2 (01:04:07):
So anyway, I.

Speaker 5 (01:04:08):
Don't that doesn't make for real good blockbuster, you know,
script writing, but still it is important for us to acknowledge.

Speaker 1 (01:04:17):
Maybe not for Hollywood standards, but by the standards that
I think as far as like what stories need to
be told, and all of these stories are being are
valid and should be told as their truth.

Speaker 2 (01:04:32):
So maybe not Hollywood.

Speaker 1 (01:04:35):
Maybe we're getting past that. Hopefully one day we can
just tell stories as they are and find their beauty
and share their beauty as they were.

Speaker 7 (01:04:43):
Maybe you should senda a proposal to Tyler.

Speaker 5 (01:04:46):
Perry Taller period get his hands.

Speaker 7 (01:04:50):
Look like, but do you think model is gonna make
a I tell.

Speaker 2 (01:04:55):
You what, we have some kind of representation of John Petis.

Speaker 7 (01:04:59):
Yeah, that's that's fair. Yeah, you know Tumas Jefferson famously wrote,
I teach Jefferson along with Benjamin Banneker. You know that
I think helps marry him. But we talk about Jefferson
a lot. He infamously wrote that Wheatly was beneath criticism,
had never made her. I don't even know if he
had read any of her poetry, you know, but he read,

(01:05:19):
he read thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
Yeah, he read. He knew who she was. That's why
he had.

Speaker 7 (01:05:24):
To, That's why he put it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:05:26):
Absolutely.

Speaker 5 (01:05:28):
You know what is that line from what you say, like,
you know, you the bitch when you call all that conversation.

Speaker 3 (01:05:35):
Yeah, because he was like, she's beneath criticism, but then
criticizes her fucking criticized?

Speaker 7 (01:05:42):
Which one is it?

Speaker 1 (01:05:44):
I wanted to also open the floor up to all
of you if you had any questions for each other.

Speaker 5 (01:05:49):
I think what don may be the you say you're
currently working on a Weekly chapter.

Speaker 7 (01:05:55):
Yeah, I'm working on two parts. Well, my book chapter
on Weekly it's about her courtship of London and thinking
about how she gets to London all that stuff. But
I'm working on another project too, about teaching Weekly as well.

Speaker 2 (01:06:09):
Yeah, Oh, so what's so what's going on?

Speaker 5 (01:06:11):
Because like when we were thinking about movies, I was thinking,
why don't we do one on weekly in London?

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
That might be really that would be very interesting.

Speaker 7 (01:06:18):
That could be that could be the whole movie. Actually,
right about her going.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
To seven days? Was she there for like seven days?

Speaker 7 (01:06:24):
Six and then she had all kinds of experiences. She
saw lions and things of that nature.

Speaker 4 (01:06:30):
So yeah, met with Ben Franklin.

Speaker 7 (01:06:33):
She met with Ben Franklin, who was you know, did
you read that he didn't he seem perturbed about the
whole meeting right in the latters?

Speaker 5 (01:06:41):
Okay, I think they were like they didn't greet him
as warmly as he I think think that he should
have been greeted or like that.

Speaker 7 (01:06:50):
Yeah, he felt some kind of way about it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Now, Oh, the ego, although I do love the chief
being Franklin.

Speaker 1 (01:06:57):
But yeah, my favorite takeaway from this experience will probably
be the letter to Scipio Morehead, which I wasn't familiar
with until this experience, and I just it's the and
that also lends to what I was saying as far
as like her understanding of how valuable she was, how

(01:07:21):
valuable other artists that she was living in the same
time with were and this idea of immortality and that
like your fame, like living well beyond your time. And
I think she was aware of that and aware of
how whatever her words her poems, they had this opportunity

(01:07:46):
to live well past her physical life, and that was
just really really beautiful to me. So I would like
to ask, what do you think Wheatley would want us
to carry forward most urgently from her work into the
next century or into this century rather.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
I'm I guess, like, if I'm taking her at her
word what she says in the volume, like you know,
on her poem on Masinas or in the you talked
about Scipio more Head, I'm guessing that one of the
things she would want us to take is just a
recognition of the idea about visibility, right, and a recognition

(01:08:26):
of what the poet brings to culture. I think God
was talking earlier about Weakly as a humanist, and I
really think that's a useful way of thinking about her, because,
like all of the about her poetry, she's reminding us
of the power of writing, of creativity, of the imagine,
like it's culturally transformative. And so I think that maybe

(01:08:49):
one of the things that she would appreciate is knowing
that we get and appreciate how powerful that is. And
I mean, here we are twenty twenty five and we're
still talking about her work. Was still talking about the
afterlives of really so yeah, I think thinking about the
humanist project that is poetry.

Speaker 7 (01:09:09):
Yeah, there's that one letter she comes back from London
and you know, she's writing with Obar and she tells Ober,
Oh my god, all this fun I had. It's almost
as I'm reading it as if my aunties are on
the phone, you know what I mean, You know what
I mean. Yeah, it's almost as if, you know, she
was just super excited to tell her friend everything that

(01:09:31):
she's seen and everything that she experienced. And then there's
this little point that reminds me of my grandmother. She's like,
but I got to keep my humbleness about. I can't
let always go to my head, you know. And of
course I don't know how one reads that, but for me,
it just seems like she didn't want to lose sight
of the fact that she had a larger design, a
larger campaign, Like, of course she can get all these

(01:09:53):
flowers and she can become this great poet, and they
can give her all the accolades and everything she wanted,
but she didn't want that. She had other things that
she wanted to do with herself, and she didn't want
to take that information and that, you know, get the
big head in other words, that I'm this super badass poet,
badass person. And so I think that level of sincerity

(01:10:13):
that she had about herself, that she was so capable
of doing all these different things, but that she wanted
to make sure that she used her talents for things
that made her feel good, for things that made her
feel as if she was, you know, making in rows
into the conversations that she wanted to have, you know.
And so I think I remember her in that regard

(01:10:36):
and the fact that again she was so able to
look at the situations that were in front of her
and find people who in so many ways would not
be supportive of her, would look at her as less
than X, Y and Z, but she was the one
who was superior because she still saw them as memen.
She still saw them for who they were and what

(01:10:58):
they were and what they were capable of doing, not
what they had done. And I think that's something that
we could learn from a personal right. Fields we repeater
over and over again, from my letters to the poems
that she writes for little kids dying, I mean all
kinds of things that she's writing in these poems, you know.

Speaker 3 (01:11:15):
I think that I'm still going to argue for the letters.
You know, the second proposal has a whole bunch of
letters in it, and it's like, you know, I I'm oh, go.

Speaker 4 (01:11:28):
Ahead, done.

Speaker 7 (01:11:29):
So the part is is that Weekly was moving towards prose.

Speaker 3 (01:11:35):
You know, I think expanding her corpus a bit, like
the second volume isn't just more poems, it's poems and letters,
you know. So I think that I know that part
of me is saying this because of my own preference.
She does not know that preference. But I also think
that there there's an interesting expansion in that second volume

(01:11:57):
to include letters. So it's like, oh, hey, you know,
maybe what we should also carry forward is kind of
additional engagement with the letters.

Speaker 7 (01:12:09):
Teaching the letters is a great way as well to
tell that story that we've been talking about.

Speaker 1 (01:12:16):
Yeah, starting with you, don and one word, how would
you describe Phyllis sweetly? Phillis sweetly is our humanness?

Speaker 6 (01:12:26):
Av a woman Oh, can I change my Tomas Timeless.

Speaker 1 (01:12:41):
Yeah, thank you so much. I really appreciate your time.

Speaker 2 (01:12:49):
Thank you, this delightful, Thanks so much for having us.

Speaker 1 (01:12:53):
When the movie comes out, we'll have to all get
together and go see it together, critique it.

Speaker 7 (01:12:59):
We're going to read because.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
Black Lit is a Black Effect original series in partnership
with iHeart Media. Is written and created by myself Jacquess
Thomas and executive produced alongside Dolly s. Bishop. Chanelle Collins
is the director of Production, Head of Talent Nicole Spence,
writer producer Jason Torres, Our researcher and producer is Jabari Davis,

(01:13:29):
and the mix and sound design is by the Humble
Duane Crawford. Gratitude is an action, so I have to
give praise to those who took the time out to
write a review. Please keep sharing and we will promise
to bring more writers and greater episodes to you. Also,

(01:13:50):
if you're looking to become a writer or in search
of a supportive writing community, join me for a free
creative writing session on my website Black writers Room dot com,
b LK writers Room dot com, or hit me up
directly for more details at Underscore T H A T.

Speaker 3 (01:14:10):
S p E a c E.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
That's t

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Reimagining Phillis Wheatley - Let's Discuss!