The Phillis Wheatley Project: Creating Gambian Stories.
There is an incredible shortage of children’s books written by Gambians, and books which featuring Gambian contexts. So we are going to change that!
One of our exciting projects is to cultivate a community of writers and support them to publish children’s books, making them available to the general public.
Through our sister company - Mbife Books which is a publishing house we have great things coming soon!
Who is Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley Peters was an enslaved person seized from Gambia, West Africa, when she was about seven years old. She was transported to the Boston docks in America. We do not know her birth name, her given name Phillis was derived from the ship that brought her to America, “the Phillis.”
Phillis is one of the best-known poets in pre-19th century America. She published her first poem in 1767. Publication of “An Elegiac Poem, on the Death of the Celebrated Divine George Whitefield” in 1770 brought her great notoriety. In 1773, with financial support she travelled to London to publish her first collection of poems, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral—the first book written by an enslaved Black woman in America, a Gambian.
She is broadly recognized as the first African American woman and only the third American woman to publish a book of poems. Her works continues to be studied by historians, and her legacy has inspired generations of writers.
