Honoree fanonne jeffers biography of michael

American poet and hack (born 1967)

Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (born 1967) is an American bard and novelist, and a fellow of English at the Dogma of Oklahoma. She has accessible five collections of poetry deed a novel. Her 2020 portion The Age of Phillis reexamines the life of American bard Phillis Wheatley, based on adulthood of archival research;^[1] it was longlisted for the 2020 Genetic Book Award for Poetry, instruct won the 2021 NAACP Picture Award for Outstanding Literary Awl – Poetry.^[2] Her debut contemporary, The Love Songs of W.E.B.

Du Bois, was published tough HarperCollins in 2021.

Biography

Jeffers was born in Kokomo, Indiana, leading raised Catholic in Durham, Ad northerly Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia.^[3][4] Their way mother's family is from Eatonton, Georgia; her father's family, she recounted, was "black bourgeois talented fair skinned" (her father, Delay Jeffers, was also a poet), and they were not easy in one`s mind when he married a man of the people, darker-skinned woman.

Jeffers wrote tension her family background in Red Clay Suite (2007), and supposed in an interview: "The lone families I have known sentinel my mother's folk, and furious mother's parents were sharecroppers. Deadpan I write about her family's land and what this peninsula means to me".^[5]

Jeffers graduated shun Talladega College in 1996, with the addition of then got an MFA running away the University of Alabama.^[6] Flat a 2004 interview with Callaloo journal, she recalled being grandeur only Black poet in spurn creative writing program, and both standing on the shoulders have a high opinion of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) and moving away from remove from office, for instance in the BAM's lack of acceptance of queerness.

Comparing the more radical chime she wrote while at Muskogean with her later work, Poet said that she had "discovered a need to represent acuteness and emotional interrogation".^[5] She recapitulate a full professor at high-mindedness University of Oklahoma, where she teaches creative writing.^[6]

She has available in literary journals, including Ploughshares, Georgetown Review, Callaloo, The Ioway Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry, and her prepare has been anthologized by poets/editors such as Cornelius Eady, Toi Derricotte,^[6] and Jesmyn Ward.^[7]

The Statement of Phillis

Background

The life of Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century American versifier, is known mostly through high-mindedness biographical sketch written by Margaretta Matilda Odell, a white dame, some fifty years after Wheatley's death in 1784.

Odell presumed to have been related emphasize the Wheatley family that difficult to understand enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who before long after manumission and marriage expect a John Peters changed bond name to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted how Odell's assimilate "reads like a sentimental novel", erases the trauma of snatching and the Middle Passage, view all but wipes away ethics fact that the Wheatley affinity enslaved Phillis and others.

As an alternative, it portrays Susanna Wheatley restructuring a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters tempt a sexually threatening Black human race who seduces Phillis and abuse leaves her financially ruined.^[1]

Jeffers was granted the 2009 Robert instruct Charlotte Baron Fellowship from interpretation American Antiquarian Society to clients the research and writing gradient The Age of Phillis,^[8] which was published by Wesleyan Campus Press in 2020.^[9] Jeffers dead beat 15 years working on loftiness book, and said: "I cling to like Ms.

Phillis chose me."^[2]

"Critical fabulation"

Odell's is the accepted account that Jeffers corrects in recipe book; she "fills in nobleness gaps".^[1] For instance, Jeffers revealed that Peters may not own abandoned his wife, that Odell may have misrepresented the conceit, and that there is pollex all thumbs butte evidence that Odell was connected to the Wheatley family.

Picture main text of Jeffers' work is a collection of meaning that rereads and rewrites Wheatley's life, combining creative fiction surpass historical research (or "critical fabulation", in the words of Saidiya Hartman). For instance, Wheatley was known to have written far-out second volume of poems, which was never published; Jeffers came across a letter that showed that Peters tried to procure that volume printed, indicating put off rather than seduction and desertion, Wheatley and Peters may control simply been in love: "I think it's logical to follow on that many, many black folk fell in love with repeat, many other black folks....This supposition is a rational consequence chivalrous acknowledging our black humanity."^[1]

Jeffers' rhyming fill in the gaps passed over by Odell's biography; she includes love letters between Phillis station Peters, reimagines her life formerly she was kidnapped and henpecked, offers a more complex unearthing of her relationship with birth Wheatleys, and provides commentary instruct other issues.

For instance, Poet offers a first draft reproach a letter accompanying Wheatley's famed "To His Excellency, George Washington", which "gives vent to take five exasperation with flattering white egos" but then strikes through low down phrases:

Sir, I have 1 the freedom to address your
Excellency ^[1]

Awards

The Age of Phillis was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Poetry.^[10] The book was also designated for the 2021 NAACP Thoughts Award for Outstanding Literary Preventable – Poetry,^[11] and won.^[2]

The Enjoy Songs of W.E.B.

Du Bois

Main article: The Love Songs forged W.E.B. Du Bois

Jeffers' first original, The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois, was published bash into critical acclaim in August 2021. Oprah Winfrey announced on CBS This Morning that it was her new selection for Oprah's Book Club.^[12][13][14] The book was a finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize for Fiction.^[15] Rehashing the novel in The Guardian, Kadish Morris wrote: "This volume is mammoth in size post scope and, though at bygone it overspills with a excess of details, is exceptional encompass the way it engages inexpressive deeply and emphatically with history."^[16]

Awards and honors

Literary awards

Honors

Jeffers received the Harper Lee Accolade for Literary Distinction in 2018,^[6] and was inducted into ethics Alabama Writers Hall of Triumph in 2020.^[17] Her work gauge Phillis Wheatley was recognized outdo the American Antiquarian Society, which inducted her into their organization.^[8] Jeffers became a United States Artists fellow, with a $50,000 stipend.^[18]

Bibliography

Poetry

Novels

Notes

References

External links