There was no precedent for it. Nevertheless,
Wheatley was a legitimate woman of learning
and letters who consciously participated in the
public discussion of the day, in a voice represent-
ing the living truth of what America claimed it
stood for—whether or not the slave-owning citi-
zens were prepared to accept it.
The need for a postcolonial criticism arose
in the twentieth century, as centuries of Euro-
pean political domination of foreign lands were
coming to a close. Postcolonial criticism began
to account for the experience and alienation of
indigenous peoples who were colonized and
changed by a controlling culture. Such authors
as Wheatley can now be understood better by
postcolonial critics, who see the same hybrid or
double references in every displaced black
author who had to find or make a new identity.
Wheatley calls herself an adventurous Afric, and
so she was, mastering the materials given to
her to create with. InJackson State Review, the
African American author and feminist Alice
Walker makes a similar remark about her own
mother, and about the creative black woman in
general: ‘‘Whatever rocky soil she landed on, she
turned into a garden.’’
Source:Susan Andersen, Critical Essay on ‘‘On Being
Brought from Africa to America,’’ inPoetry for Students,
Gale, Cengage Learning, 2009.
Mary McAleer Balkun
In the following excerpt, Balkun analyzes ‘‘On
Being Brought from Africa to America’’ and
asserts that Wheatley uses the rhetoric of white
culture to manipulate her audience.
...Wheatley’s cultural awareness is even
more evident in the poem ‘‘On Being Brought
From Africa to America,’’ written the year after
the Harvard poem in 1768. The later poem
exhibits an even greater level of complexity and
authorial control, with Wheatley manipulating
her audience by even more covert means. Rather
than a direct appeal to a specific group, one with
which the audience is asked to identify, this short
poem is a meditation on being black and Chris-
tian in colonial America. As did ‘‘To the Univer-
sity of Cambridge,’’ this poem begins with the
sentiment that the speaker’s removal from Africa
was an act of ‘‘mercy,’’ but in this context it
becomes Wheatley’s version of the ‘‘fortunate
fall’’; the speaker’s removal to the colonies,
despite the circumstances, is perceived as a bless-
ing. She does not, however, stipulate exactly
whose act of mercy it was that saved her, God’s
or man’s. One result is that, from the outset,
Wheatley allows the audience to be positioned
in the role of benefactor as opposed to oppressor,
creating an avenue for the ideological reversal the
poem enacts. Hers is a seemingly conservative
statement that becomes highly ambiguous upon
analysis, transgressive rather than compliant.
While the use of italics for‘‘Pagan’’and
‘‘Savior’’may have been a printer’s decision
rather than Wheatley’s, the words are also con-
nected through their position in their respective
lines and through metric emphasis. (Thus, any-
one hearing the poem read aloud would also
have been aware of the implied connection.) In
lieu of an open declaration connecting the Savior
of all men and the African American population,
one which might cause an adverse reaction in the
yet-to-be-persuaded, Wheatley relies on indirec-
tion and the principle of association. This strat-
egy is also evident in her use of the word
benightedto describe the state of her soul (2).
While it suggests the darkness of her African
skin, it also resonates with the state of all those
living in sin, including her audience. To be
‘‘benighted’’ is to be in moral or spiritual dark-
ness as a result of ignorance or lack of enlight-
enment, certainly a description with which many
of Wheatley’s audience would have agreed. But,
in addition, the word sets up the ideological
enlightenment that Wheatley hopes will occur
in the second stanza, when the speaker turns
the tables on the audience. The idea that the
speaker was brought to America by some force
beyond her power to fight it (a sentiment reiter-
ated from ‘‘To the University of Cambridge’’)
once more puts her in an authoritative position.
She is both in America and actively seeking
redemption because God himself has willed it.
Chosen by Him, the speaker is again thrust into
the role of preacher, one with a mission to saveHERS IS AN INCLUSIONARY RHETORIC,
REINFORCING THE SIMILARITIES BETWEEN THE
AUDIENCE AND THE SPEAKER OF THE POEM, INDEED
ALL ‘CHRISTIANS.’...’’On Being Brought from Africa to America