Teaching Suggestions for High School
​(Grades 9-12)

We recommend
The Age of Phillis 
by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers
​for its content, critical approach, imagination, and creativity for older students.

Alongside Jeffers's book, we recommend the collection of short films and resources, Imagining the Age of Phillis, that were adapted from Jeffers's poems. "Directed by John Oluwole ADEkoje and produced by Patrick Gabridge, the video series showcases eight different poems, filmed on location at the Old State House and Old South Meeting House, locations central to civic life in 18th century Boston." 

Option #1

"On Being Brought from Africa to America"

• Click for Wheatley Peters's poem: "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
• Cornelius Eady's Reading and Commentary on "On Being Brought from Africa to America"
• Members of Old South Church (where Wheatley Peters was baptized) speak on her relevance today
• Dramatization of Jeffers's Poem: "Phillis Wheatley is Baptized at Old South Church" (click here for PDF of poem)
• Interview with Sabrina Victor on enacting Wheatley Peters
• Click here for an interview with Honoreé Fanonne Jeffers called "Looking for Miss Phillis"
• Sample Lesson Plan from Poets.org
• For Discussion: How and why are the poetry of Wheatley Peters and Jeffers communicating? What kind of poems might students write about Wheatley Peters's life? Please consider having high school readers submit their projects to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

"I can run a thread from Phillis Wheatley all the way through everything else that goes on in African American poetry.  Everything you want to know about what goes on in the African American poetic for me goes back to that one little poem, 'On Being Brought From Africa to America.'  Eight lines, and it’s full of double consciousness.  She’s grateful about being saved and liberated, but in the last few lines she tells you she knows how she’s being looked at. By white people.  It’s about history. " ~Cornelius Eady

Option #2

"On Imagination"

• Click here for "On Imagination" by Phillis Wheatley Peters
• Click here for page in Wheatley's collection of poems verifying that she is the author​
• Click here for Wheatley's endorsement
• Click here for a PDF of Jeffers's "How Phillis Wheatley Might Have Obtained the Approval of Eighteen Prominent White Men of Boston to Publish Her Book of Poetry"
• Click here for a dramatization of Jeffers's poem: "How Phillis Wheatley Might Have Obtained the Approval of Eighteen Prominent White Men of Boston to Publish Her Book of Poetry"
• Click here for a PDF of “Looking for Miss Phillis” by Honoreé Fanonne Jeffers
• Click here for an interview with Honoreé Fanonne Jeffers called "Looking for Miss Phillis"
• Click here for a PDF of "Phillis Wheatley On Trial" by Henry Louis Jr. Gates (as well as the longer book, The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America's First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers)
• Another resource: The Trial  of Phillis Wheatley by Ronald Wheatley is a 200-page play published in 2013 that students might enjoy reading and enacting
• For Discussion: What do you think of the need for Wheatley Peter's work to be endorsed?  Perhaps with a small group, students can write a letter/endorsement of sorts that claims the unequivocal importance of Wheatley Peters's poetry. Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

Option #3

Letters from Phillis Wheatley to Obour Tanner

• Click for "Letter from Phillis Wheatley to Obour Tanner" (July 19, 1772)
• Click for "Letter from Phillis Wheatley to Obour Tanner" (October 30, 1773)
• Click here for a PDF of Jeffers's poems: "Lost Letter #7: Phillis Wheatley, Boston, to Obour Tanner, Newport" and "Lost Letter #8: Obour Tanner, Newport, to Phillis Wheatley, Boston"
• Click here for Dramatization of Jeffers's poem: "Lost Letter #7: Phillis Wheatley, Boston, to Obour Tanner, Newport"
• ​Click here for Dramatization of Jeffers's poem: "Lost Letter #8: Obour Tanner, Newport, to Phillis Wheatley, Boston"
• ​Click here for PDF of 6-page essay called "Phillis Wheatley on Friendship" by Tara Bynum
• Click here for online essay: "'Most Affectionately Ever Yours': Slavery, Literacy and Black Women's Friendships" by Tara Bynum and Alexis Pauline Gumbs
• For Discussion: Why was it so important for Wheatley Peters and Tanner to affirm one another?  Jeffers (as well as the essays by Bynum and Gumbs) believe that there are secret codes of meaning between  Wheatley Peters and Tanner.  Do you agree?  If so, what might these codes be?  If you disagree, why? Perhaps using Bynum and Gumbs as inspiration, students can pair with a friend and write letters back and forth addressing these questions like Tara Bynum and Alexis Pauline Gumbs did in 2012 on this (click here) Tumblr page. Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

Option #4

"To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth" 

• Click here for full text of "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth" 
• Dramatization of "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth" (this video includes reflections on the appointment of William, Earl of Dartmouth, by Phillis Wheatley, 1772, and the 1773 Petition for Manumission from Felix to Governor Hutchinson)
• Click here for "To Phillis Wheatley’s Mother" by Cornelius Eady (poem inspired by "To Phillis Wheatley’s "To the Right Honorable William, Earl of Dartmouth")
• Click here for a sample lesson plan from Ithaca College
• For Discussion: How does Wheatley Peters's experience of slavery influence her discussion of liberty? Why do you think Cornelius Eady, famous American poet of today, was compelled to wrote a poem in honor of the mother Phillis never saw again? Perhaps, students might write a poem to her mother or family the way Cornelius Eady has. Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

For a sample lesson plan about Wheatley's social context, click here.

More Resources 

Hang a Thousand Trees with Ribbons: The Story of Phillis Wheatley by Ann Rinaldi

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This 352-page book tells about the life of Phillis Wheatley Peters and is written especially for young adults.  The genre is historical fiction and can be incorporated across humanities and social science classrooms.  This book might serve as a good text for literature circles or can be excerpted for a whole class.  Click here for the first two chapters of the book.

My Name Is Phillis Wheatley: A Story of Slavery and Freedom by Afua Cooper

This 152-page book tells about the life of Phillis Wheatley Peters and is written especially for young adults.  It is told from the voice of Phillis Wheatley Peters and opens by imagining her African family as possible griots given her brilliance with words.  Students might also examine the difficulty of assuming first-person narration. The genre is historical fiction and can be incorporated across humanities and social science classrooms.  This book might serve as a good text for literature circles or can be excerpted for a whole class.  Click here for the first two chapters of the book.

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Students might consider the critical role of historical fiction in imagining Phillis Wheatley Peters's life and poetry. Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects related to these books to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

The Poems of Phillis Wheatley with Letters and a Memoir

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This 96-page book has been packaged for young people and  includes the poems of Phillis Wheatley Peters alongside letters and the much contested Memoir. These materials are also available to you free online (click here).

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This book closes with a much-contested memoir by Margaretta Matilda Odell's who calls herself "a collateral descendant of Mrs. Wheatley" who has been familiar with the name and fame of Phillis from her childhood."  Follow-up discussions and writing activities might critically question this Memoir (see the readings especially in Option #2 above).  Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more)  

• Click here to read the Memoir. 
• Click here to read a critical commentary about the Memoir.
• Click here for the full text of the Poems, Letters, and Memoir can be found here.

Project Ideas

Write a letter or poem to Phillis Wheatley like this TUMBLR account seven years ago (click here for examples) that you will turn into a pocket book.  These letters were part of Alexis Pauline Gumbs's Pocket Poetry Prayer Meeting in 2012 where writers gathered to produce poems.  Together, they produced a box-set of tiny origami books of poems dedicated to Wheatley Peters to send out into the world. ​Please consider having high school readers and writers submit their projects related to these books to the 2023 DFW-Writes-WheatleyPeters Contest (click here for more).

Click here for ​"The Difficult Miracle of Black Poetry in America: Something Like a Sonnet for Phillis Wheatley" by June Jordan
(click here to listen to Jordan reading this aloud)

​A Critical Resource for Teachers

(click here)

"Loving Blackness across Arts and Sciences"
by Michelle S. Hite and Deanna P. Koretsky

This essay reflects on “loving Blackness” as a pedagogical tool in assigning Honore Fanonne Jeffers’s The Age of Phillis. As such, it articulates the possibilities for regarding the inner lives of Black people beyond the constraints of anti-Blackness and white supremacy. When released from this antagonism, we challenge our students with exploring Black life on its own terms. This approach informs how we brought STEM students and advanced English literature students together to reconsider and reimagine the potential narrative strands found in pre-nineteenth-century Black history and the promises of Black futures using The Age of Phillis as a model.