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In addition to Wheatley's poem "To His Excellency General Washington", "On Being Brought from Africa to America" is among her most often anthologized works. This poem can be said to be among the most controversial poems in African-American literature, as it overlooks the brutality of the slave trade, the horrors of the middle passage and the ...
Her poetry expressed Christian themes, and many poems were dedicated to famous figures. Over one-third consist of elegies, the remainder being on religious, classical and abstract themes. [28] She seldom referred to her own life in her poems. One example of a poem on slavery is "On being brought from Africa to America": [29]
Cullen's poem, "Heritage," also shows how one finds self-expression in facing the weight of their own history as African Americans brought from Africa to America as slaves. Langston Hughes' poem, "Youth," puts forth the message that Negro youth have a bright future, and that they should rise together in their self-expression and seek freedom. [12]
Phillis Wheatley was the first published black female poet, and she was converted to Christianity as a child after she was brought to America. Her beliefs were overt in her works; she describes the journey of being taken from a Pagan land to be exposed to Christianity in the colonies in a poem entitled "On Being Brought from Africa to America."
Phillis Wheatley, Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, the first book of poetry by an American slave, including "On Being Brought from Africa to America". The book was published in Aldgate , London because publishers in Boston , Massachusetts , had refused to publish the text.
They were captured and brought to America as part of the Atlantic slave trade. [19] African Americans are descended from various ethnic groups, mostly from ethnic groups that lived in West and Central Africa, including the Sahel. A smaller number of African Americans are descended from ethnic groups that lived in Eastern and Southeastern Africa.
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Treatment of the enslaved was horrific due to the captured African men and women being considered less than human; to slavers, they were "cargo", or "goods", and treated as such. Women with children were not as desirable for enslavement for they took up too much space, and toddlers were not wanted because of everyday maintenance. [ 25 ]