On Being Brought from Africa to America

Considered one of the founding writers of African American literature, Phillis Wheatley’s poems are essential to the American canon. “On Being Brought from Africa to America” remains the most anthologized of her poems. As one of the first written in English to record the experience of slavery, the poem is pivotal to the developments of critical race theory and postcolonialism. It continues to be the subject of debate among scholars.

Originally written in the neoclassic period, the poem mirrors the style of its contemporaries. As a response to the emotionality of renaissance poetry, neoclassicism is more concerned with the intellect: exhibiting structures of logic and reason over sentiment. “On Being Brought from Africa to America” is not an overtly emotional poem. Instead, it explores its subject—personal enslavement—by using various facets of rationality.

For this reason, many critics emerging in the Black Power literary movements of the 1960s criticized Wheatley for her lack of emotional engagement to her enslavement. Some argue that Wheatley, given her upbringing, internalized the racism of her masters, which is referred to as Uncle Tom syndrome—a term originating from the titular character of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel, Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Such critics look to Wheatley’s use of the word “mercy” in the poem as justification for their claims.