Honorée Fanonne Jeffers: Difference between revisions
Cwmhiraeth (talk | contribs) m typo |
GiantSnowman (talk | contribs) m date formats per MOS:DATEFORMAT by script |
||
| Line 1: | Line 1: | ||
{{Use dmy dates|date=March 2021}} |
|||
{{Short description|American poet and novelist (born 1967)}} |
{{Short description|American poet and novelist (born 1967)}} |
||
[[File:Honoree fanonne jeffers 3261598.JPG|250px|right|thumb|Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, 2014]] |
[[File:Honoree fanonne jeffers 3261598.JPG|250px|right|thumb|Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, 2014]] |
||
'''Honorée Fanonne Jeffers''' (b. 1967) is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the [[University of Oklahoma]]. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection ''The Age of Phillis'' reexamines the life of American poet [[Phillis Wheatley]], based on years of archival research;<ref name=winkler>{{cite news |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-phillis-wheatley-was-recovered-through-history |title=How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History: For decades, a white woman's memoir shaped our understanding of America's first Black poet. Does a new book change the story? |first=Elizabeth |last=Winkler |date= |
'''Honorée Fanonne Jeffers''' (b. 1967) is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the [[University of Oklahoma]]. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection ''The Age of Phillis'' reexamines the life of American poet [[Phillis Wheatley]], based on years of archival research;<ref name=winkler>{{cite news |url=https://www.newyorker.com/books/under-review/how-phillis-wheatley-was-recovered-through-history |title=How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History: For decades, a white woman's memoir shaped our understanding of America's first Black poet. Does a new book change the story? |first=Elizabeth |last=Winkler |date=30 July 2020 |accessdate=11 February 2021 |newspaper=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref> it was long-listed for the 2020 [[National Book Award for Poetry]], and she was the recipient in 2021 of a [[United States Artists]] fellowship. |
||
==Biography== |
==Biography== |
||
Jeffers's mother's family is from [[Eatonton, Georgia]]; her father's family, she recounted, was "black bourgeois and fair skinned" (her father, Lance Jeffers, was also a poet), and they were not happy when he married a working-class, darker-skinned woman. She wrote about her family background in ''Red Clay Suite'' (2007), and said in an interview, "The only families I have known are my mother's folk, and my mother's parents were sharecroppers. So I write about her family's land and what this land means to me".<ref name=rowell/> She graduated from [[Talladega College]] (1996), and then got an MFA from the [[University of Alabama]].<ref name=haskins>{{cite news |url=https://www.al.com/opinion/2018/03/talladega_college_grad_wins_20.html |accessdate= |
Jeffers's mother's family is from [[Eatonton, Georgia]]; her father's family, she recounted, was "black bourgeois and fair skinned" (her father, Lance Jeffers, was also a poet), and they were not happy when he married a working-class, darker-skinned woman. She wrote about her family background in ''Red Clay Suite'' (2007), and said in an interview, "The only families I have known are my mother's folk, and my mother's parents were sharecroppers. So I write about her family's land and what this land means to me".<ref name=rowell/> She graduated from [[Talladega College]] (1996), and then got an MFA from the [[University of Alabama]].<ref name=haskins>{{cite news |url=https://www.al.com/opinion/2018/03/talladega_college_grad_wins_20.html |accessdate=11 February 2021 |title=Talladega College grad wins 2018 Harper Lee award |date=11 March 2018 |first=Shelly |last=Haskins |newspaper=[[The Huntsville Times]] }}</ref> In a 2004 interview with ''[[Callaloo (literary magazine)|Callaloo]]'', she recalled being the only Black poet in her creative writing program, and both standing on the shoulders of the [[Black Arts Movement]] and moving away from it, for instance in the BAM's lack of acceptance of homosexuality. Comparing the more radical poetry she wrote while at Alabama with her later work, she said that she had "discovered a need to represent subtlety and emotional interrogation".<ref name=rowell>{{cite journal |title='Speaking from a Creolized Environment': An Interview with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers |first=Charles Henry |last=Rowell |journal=[[Callaloo (literary magazine)|Callaloo]] |volume=27 |issue=4 |year=2004 |pages=976-88 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/3300992 }}</ref> She is a full professor at the [[University of Oklahoma]], where she teaches creative writing.<ref name=haskins/> |
||
She has published in literary journals including ''[[Ploughshares]]'', ''[[Georgetown Review]]'', ''[[Callaloo (literary magazine)|Callaloo]]'', ''[[Iowa Review]]'', ''[[Oxford American]]'', ''[[Prairie Schooner]]'', and ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'', and her work has been anthologized by poet/editors such as [[Cornelius Eady]], [[Toi Derricotte]],<ref name=haskins/> and [[Jesmyn Ward]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/06/24/black-history-racism-social-justice-books-george-floyd/112006644/ |newspaper=[[The Detroit News]] |accessdate=February |
She has published in literary journals including ''[[Ploughshares]]'', ''[[Georgetown Review]]'', ''[[Callaloo (literary magazine)|Callaloo]]'', ''[[Iowa Review]]'', ''[[Oxford American]]'', ''[[Prairie Schooner]]'', and ''[[Poetry (magazine)|Poetry]]'', and her work has been anthologized by poet/editors such as [[Cornelius Eady]], [[Toi Derricotte]],<ref name=haskins/> and [[Jesmyn Ward]].<ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/books/2020/06/24/black-history-racism-social-justice-books-george-floyd/112006644/ |newspaper=[[The Detroit News]] |accessdate=11 February 2021 |title=Check out more than 20 books to learn about black history, racism and social justice |first1=Moira |last1=Macdonald |first2=Naomi |last2=Ishisaka |date=25 June 2020}}</ref> |
||
==''The Age of Phillis''== |
==''The Age of Phillis''== |
||
===Background=== |
===Background=== |
||
The life of [[Phillis Wheatley]], the 18th-c American poet, is known mostly through the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, some fifty years after Wheatley's death in 1784. Odell claimed to have been related to the Wheatley family, which had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who soon after manumission and marriage to a John Peters changed her name to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted how Odell's account "reads like a sentimental novel", erases the trauma of kidnapping and the [[Middle Passage]], and all but wipes away the fact that the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis and others. Instead it portrays Susanna Wheatley as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as a sexually threatening Black man who seduces Phillis and then leaves her financially ruined.<ref name=winkler/> Jeffers was granted the 2009 Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society to support the research and writing of ''The Age of Phillis'',<ref name=scarlet/> which was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://msmagazine.com/2020/04/22/poetry-for-the-rest-of-us-2020-roundup/ |title=Poetry for the Rest of Us: 2020 Roundup |date= |
The life of [[Phillis Wheatley]], the 18th-c American poet, is known mostly through the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, some fifty years after Wheatley's death in 1784. Odell claimed to have been related to the Wheatley family, which had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who soon after manumission and marriage to a John Peters changed her name to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted how Odell's account "reads like a sentimental novel", erases the trauma of kidnapping and the [[Middle Passage]], and all but wipes away the fact that the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis and others. Instead it portrays Susanna Wheatley as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as a sexually threatening Black man who seduces Phillis and then leaves her financially ruined.<ref name=winkler/> Jeffers was granted the 2009 Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society to support the research and writing of ''The Age of Phillis'',<ref name=scarlet/> which was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020.<ref>{{cite news |url=https://msmagazine.com/2020/04/22/poetry-for-the-rest-of-us-2020-roundup/ |title=Poetry for the Rest of Us: 2020 Roundup |date=22 April 2020 |first=Karla |last=Strand |newspaper=[[Ms. (magazine)|Ms.]] |accessdate=11 February 2021}}</ref> |
||
==="Critical fabulation"=== |
==="Critical fabulation"=== |
||
| Line 27: | Line 28: | ||
===Honors=== |
===Honors=== |
||
''The Age of Phillis'' was long-listed for the 2020 [[National Book Award for Poetry]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2020/?cat=poetry |publisher=[[National Book Foundation]] |accessdate= |
''The Age of Phillis'' was long-listed for the 2020 [[National Book Award for Poetry]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-2020/?cat=poetry |publisher=[[National Book Foundation]] |accessdate=11 February 2021 |title=2020 Winners: Poetry}}</ref> The book was also nominated for the 2021 [[NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry]].<ref>{{cite web |url=https://mynewsla.com/hollywood/2021/02/02/nominations-announced-for-52nd-naacp-image-awards/ |accessdate=11 February 2021 |publisher=[[NAACP]] |title=Nominations Announced For 52nd NAACP Image Awards |date=2 February 2021}}</ref> |
||
==Bibliography== |
==Bibliography== |
||
*''The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois'' (Harper, 2021)<ref>{{cite web |publisher=[[American Booksellers Association]] |url=https://www.bookweb.org/news/talk-next-seasons-best-new-titles-virtual-buzz-books-editors-panel-1624758 |title=Talk Next Season's Best New Titles at Virtual Buzz Books Editors Panel |date= |
*''The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois'' (Harper, 2021)<ref>{{cite web |publisher=[[American Booksellers Association]] |url=https://www.bookweb.org/news/talk-next-seasons-best-new-titles-virtual-buzz-books-editors-panel-1624758 |title=Talk Next Season's Best New Titles at Virtual Buzz Books Editors Panel |date=6 January 2021 |first=Emily |last=Behnke |accessdate=11 February 2021}}</ref> |
||
*''The Age of Phillis'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) |
*''The Age of Phillis'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2020) |
||
*''The Glory Gets'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) |
*''The Glory Gets'' (Wesleyan University Press, 2015) |
||
| Line 38: | Line 39: | ||
==Honors== |
==Honors== |
||
Jeffers received the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction in 2018,<ref name=haskins/> and was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Her work on Phillis Wheatley was recognized by the [[American Antiquarian Society]], which inducted her into their organization.<ref name=scarlet>{{cite news |url=https://thescarlet.org/17309/category_news/a-reading-and-qa-with-honoree-fanonne-jeffers-and-the-age-of-phillis/ |title=A Reading and Q&A with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and The Age of Phillis |first1=Luis |last1=Santos |first2=Morgan |last2=Hylton |date=November |
Jeffers received the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction in 2018,<ref name=haskins/> and was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Her work on Phillis Wheatley was recognized by the [[American Antiquarian Society]], which inducted her into their organization.<ref name=scarlet>{{cite news |url=https://thescarlet.org/17309/category_news/a-reading-and-qa-with-honoree-fanonne-jeffers-and-the-age-of-phillis/ |title=A Reading and Q&A with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and The Age of Phillis |first1=Luis |last1=Santos |first2=Morgan |last2=Hylton |date=23 November 2020 |accessdate=11 February 2021 |newspaper=[[Clark University|The Scarlet]]}}</ref> Jeffers became a [[United States Artists]] fellow, with a $50,000 stipend.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.unitedstatesartists.org/fellow/honoree-fanonne-jeffers/ |publisher=[[United States Artists]] |accessdate=11 February 2021 |title=Honorée Fanonne Jeffers}}</ref> |
||
==References== |
==References== |
||
Revision as of 12:07, 6 March 2021
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (b. 1967) is an American poet and novelist, and a professor of English at the University of Oklahoma. She has published five collections of poetry and a novel. Her 2020 collection The Age of Phillis reexamines the life of American poet Phillis Wheatley, based on years of archival research;[1] it was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry, and she was the recipient in 2021 of a United States Artists fellowship.
Biography
Jeffers's mother's family is from Eatonton, Georgia; her father's family, she recounted, was "black bourgeois and fair skinned" (her father, Lance Jeffers, was also a poet), and they were not happy when he married a working-class, darker-skinned woman. She wrote about her family background in Red Clay Suite (2007), and said in an interview, "The only families I have known are my mother's folk, and my mother's parents were sharecroppers. So I write about her family's land and what this land means to me".[2] She graduated from Talladega College (1996), and then got an MFA from the University of Alabama.[3] In a 2004 interview with Callaloo, she recalled being the only Black poet in her creative writing program, and both standing on the shoulders of the Black Arts Movement and moving away from it, for instance in the BAM's lack of acceptance of homosexuality. Comparing the more radical poetry she wrote while at Alabama with her later work, she said that she had "discovered a need to represent subtlety and emotional interrogation".[2] She is a full professor at the University of Oklahoma, where she teaches creative writing.[3]
She has published in literary journals including Ploughshares, Georgetown Review, Callaloo, Iowa Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry, and her work has been anthologized by poet/editors such as Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte,[3] and Jesmyn Ward.[4]
The Age of Phillis
Background
The life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-c American poet, is known mostly through the biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white woman, some fifty years after Wheatley's death in 1784. Odell claimed to have been related to the Wheatley family, which had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who soon after manumission and marriage to a John Peters changed her name to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted how Odell's account "reads like a sentimental novel", erases the trauma of kidnapping and the Middle Passage, and all but wipes away the fact that the Wheatley family enslaved Phillis and others. Instead it portrays Susanna Wheatley as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as a sexually threatening Black man who seduces Phillis and then leaves her financially ruined.[1] Jeffers was granted the 2009 Robert and Charlotte Baron Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society to support the research and writing of The Age of Phillis,[5] which was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020.[6]
"Critical fabulation"
Odell's is the accepted narrative that Jeffers corrects in her book; she "fills in the gaps".[1] For instance, she discovered that Peters may not have abandoned his wife, and that the relationship may have been misrepresented by Odell, and that there is no evidence that Odell was actually related to the Wheatley family. The main text of Jeffers' book is a collection of poetry that rereads and rewrites Wheatley's life, combining creative fiction with historical research (or "critical fabulation", in the words of Saidiya Hartman). For instance, Wheatley was known to have written a second volume of poems, which was never published; Jeffers came across a letter that showed that Peters tried to get that volume printed, indicating that rather than seduction and abandonment, Wheatley and Peters may have simple been in love: "I think it's logical to assume that many, many black folks fell in love with many, many other black folks....This assumption is a rational consequence of acknowledging our black humanity."[1]
Jeffers' poems fill in the gaps left by Odell's biography; she includes love letters between her and Peters, reimagines her life before she was kidnapped and enslaved, offers a more complex picture of her relationship with the Wheatleys, and provides commentary on other issues. For instance, she offers a first draft of a letter accompanying Wheatley's famous "To His Excellency, George Washington", which "gives vent to her exasperation with flattering white egos" but then strikes through some phrases:
Sir, I have taken the freedom
which ifto address your
my master hadn't given me would have
been my own anyway
Excellencywho I heard behaves like[1]
either a gentlemen or a tyrant
depending on his moods or his money
Honors
The Age of Phillis was long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.[7] The book was also nominated for the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work – Poetry.[8]
Bibliography
- The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois (Harper, 2021)[9]
- The Age of Phillis (Wesleyan University Press, 2020)
- The Glory Gets (Wesleyan University Press, 2015)
- Red Clay Suite (Southern Illinois University Press, 2007)
- Outlandish Blues (Wesleyan University Press, 2003)
- The Gospel of Barbecue (Kent State University Press, 2000)
Honors
Jeffers received the Harper Lee Award for Literary Distinction in 2018,[3] and was inducted into the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame. Her work on Phillis Wheatley was recognized by the American Antiquarian Society, which inducted her into their organization.[5] Jeffers became a United States Artists fellow, with a $50,000 stipend.[10]
References
- ^ a b c d e Winkler, Elizabeth (30 July 2020). "How Phillis Wheatley Was Recovered Through History: For decades, a white woman's memoir shaped our understanding of America's first Black poet. Does a new book change the story?". The New Yorker. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ a b Rowell, Charles Henry (2004). "'Speaking from a Creolized Environment': An Interview with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers". Callaloo. 27 (4): 976–88.
- ^ a b c d Haskins, Shelly (11 March 2018). "Talladega College grad wins 2018 Harper Lee award". The Huntsville Times. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ Macdonald, Moira; Ishisaka, Naomi (25 June 2020). "Check out more than 20 books to learn about black history, racism and social justice". The Detroit News. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ a b Santos, Luis; Hylton, Morgan (23 November 2020). "A Reading and Q&A with Honorée Fanonne Jeffers and The Age of Phillis". The Scarlet. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ Strand, Karla (22 April 2020). "Poetry for the Rest of Us: 2020 Roundup". Ms. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ "2020 Winners: Poetry". National Book Foundation. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ "Nominations Announced For 52nd NAACP Image Awards". NAACP. 2 February 2021. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ Behnke, Emily (6 January 2021). "Talk Next Season's Best New Titles at Virtual Buzz Books Editors Panel". American Booksellers Association. Retrieved 11 February 2021.
- ^ "Honorée Fanonne Jeffers". United States Artists. Retrieved 11 February 2021.