Editing Phillis Wheatley (section)

== Scholarly critique ==
Black literary scholars from the 1960s to the present in critiquing Wheatley's writing have noted the absence in it of her sense of identity as a black enslaved person.<ref name="Reising-1996">{{Cite book|last=Reising, Russell.|title=Loose ends : closure and crisis in the American social text|date=1996|publisher=Duke University Press|isbn=0-8223-1891-1|location=Durham, N.C.|oclc=34875703}}</ref><ref>Matson, R. Lynn. "Phillis Wheatley--Soul Sister?." Phylon 33, no. 3 (1972): 222-230. At the same time, Matson notes that Wheatley was hindered by her tenuous social position and concludes that if Wheatley "is not exactly a soul sister, she is certainly a distant relative." Id. at 230.</ref> A number of black literary scholars have viewed her work—and its widespread admiration—as a barrier to the development of black people during her time and as a prime example of [[Uncle Tom syndrome]], believing that Wheatley's lack of awareness of her condition of enslavement furthers this syndrome among descendants of Africans in the Americas.<ref name="Reising-1996" /> However, others, more recently, have argued on her behalf. O'Neal notes that Wheatley "was a strong force among contemporary abolitionist writers, and that, through the use of Biblical imagery, she incorporated anti-slavery statements in her work within the confines of her era and her position as a slave."<ref>See O'Neal, note 20 above at p. 500. O'Neal goes on note that Wheatley's critics "do not suggest what alternative tactics could be expected from writers who were also slaves. In fact, no historical records as yet have shown a slave of the Revolutionary era who made--by the measure of today's standard--militant, outspoken anti-slavery statments in America's public media." Id. at 510.</ref> Chernoh Sesay, Jr. sees a trend towards a more balanced view of Wheatley, looking at her "not in twentieth century terms, but instead according to the conditions of the eighteenth century,"<ref>Chernoh Sesay, Jr., "Remembering Phillis Wheatley," ''Black Perspectives'' (June 26, 2016), https://aaihs.org/remembering-phillis-wheatley</ref> and Henry Louis Gates has argued for her rehabilitation, asking "What would happen if we ceased to stereotype Wheatley but, instead, read her, read her with all the resourcefulness that she herself brought to her craft?"<ref>Gates, note 2 above pp. 87-88.</ref>  

Some scholars thought Wheatley's perspective came from her upbringing. Writing in 1974, Eleanor Smith argued that the Wheatley family took interest in her at a young age because of her timid and submissive nature.<ref name="Smith-1974">{{Cite journal|last=Smith|first=Eleanor|date=1974|title=Phillis Wheatley: A Black Perspective|journal=The Journal of Negro Education |volume=43 |issue=3 |pages=401–407 |doi=10.2307/2966531|jstor=2966531}}</ref> Using this to their advantage, the Wheatley family was able to mold and shape her into a person of their liking.<ref name="Smith-1974" /> The family separated her from other slaves in the home and she was prevented from doing anything other than very light housework.<ref name="Smith-1974" />  This shaping prevented Phillis from ever becoming a threat to the Wheatley family or other people from the white community.<ref name="Smith-1974" />  As a result, Phillis was allowed to attend white social events and this created a misconception of the relationship between black and white people for her.<ref name="Smith-1974" />

The matter of Wheatley's biography, "a white woman's memoir", has been a subject of investigation. In 2020, American poet [[Honorée Fanonne Jeffers]] published her ''The Age of Phillis'', based on the understanding that Margaretta Matilda Odell's account of Wheatley's life portrayed Wheatley inaccurately, and as a character in a sentimental novel; the poems by Jeffers attempt to fill in the gaps and recreate a more realistic portrait of Wheatley.<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=July 30, 2020 |accessdate=February 11, 2021 |newspaper=[[The New Yorker]]}}</ref>