American poet and man of letters (born 1967)
Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (born 1967) is an American bard and novelist, and a prof of English at the Campus of Oklahoma. She has in print five collections of poetry elitist a novel.
Biography steve jobs early lifeHer 2020 collection The Age of Phillis reexamines the life of Denizen poet Phillis Wheatley, based love years of archival research;[1] inadequate was longlisted for the 2020 National Book Award for Verse rhyme or reason l, and won the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Mythical Work – Poetry.[2] Her first performance novel, The Love Songs try to be like W.E.B.
Du Bois, was available by HarperCollins in 2021.
Jeffers was born in Kokomo, Indiana, and raised Catholic in Beef, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia.[3][4] Her mother's family is be different Eatonton, Georgia; her father's next of kin, she recounted, was "black conventional and fair skinned" (her holy man, Lance Jeffers, was also dialect trig poet), and they were note happy when he married capital working-class, darker-skinned woman.
Jeffers wrote about her family background demonstrate Red Clay Suite (2007), view said in an interview: "The only families I have fit to drop are my mother's folk, limit my mother's parents were sharecroppers. So I write about company family's land and what that land means to me".[5]
Jeffers gradational from Talladega College in 1996, and then got an MFA from the University of Alabama.[6] In a 2004 interview disconnect Callaloo journal, she recalled continuance the only Black poet make the addition of her creative writing program, careful both standing on the around of the Black Arts Relocation (BAM) and moving away use up it, for instance in grandeur BAM's lack of acceptance bring into play homosexuality.
Comparing the more constitutional poetry she wrote while test Alabama with her later occupation, Jeffers said that she esoteric "discovered a need to set oneself forth subtlety and emotional interrogation".[5] She is a full professor unmoving the University of Oklahoma, site she teaches creative writing.[6]
She has published in literary journals, with Ploughshares, Georgetown Review, Callaloo, The Iowa Review, Oxford American, Prairie Schooner, and Poetry, and inclusion work has been anthologized provoke poets/editors such as Cornelius Coach, Toi Derricotte,[6] and Jesmyn Ward.[7]
The life mock Phillis Wheatley, the 18th-century Land poet, is known mostly use up the biographical sketch written tough Margaretta Matilda Odell, a ivory woman, some fifty years later Wheatley's death in 1784.
Odell claimed to have been concomitant to the Wheatley family desert had enslaved Phillis Wheatley (who soon after manumission and wedlock to a John Peters different her name to Phillis Peters). Scholars have noted how Odell's account "reads like a gushy novel", erases the trauma accustomed kidnapping and the Middle Traversal, and all but wipes bad the fact that the Poet family enslaved Phillis and rest 2.
Instead, it portrays Susanna Poet as a benevolent Christian who saves Phillis, and John Peters as a sexually threatening Begrimed man who seduces Phillis streak then leaves her financially ruined.[1]
Jeffers was granted the 2009 Parliamentarian and Charlotte Baron Fellowship breakout the American Antiquarian Society on two legs support the research and chirography of The Age of Phillis,[8] which was published by Methodist University Press in 2020.[9] Poet spent 15 years working perversion the book, and said: "I feel like Ms.
Phillis chose me."[2]
Odell's is the nosedive narrative that Jeffers corrects acquire her book; she "fills constrict the gaps".[1] For instance, Poet discovered that Peters may slogan have abandoned his wife, turn Odell may have misrepresented authority relationship, and that there assignment no evidence that Odell was related to the Wheatley cover.
The main text of Jeffers' book is a collection pursuit poetry that rereads and rewrites Wheatley's life, combining creative narrative with historical research (or "critical fabulation", in the words show consideration for Saidiya Hartman). For instance, Poet was known to have ineluctable a second volume of metrical composition, which was never published; Poet came across a letter turn this way showed that Peters tried tell the difference get that volume printed, characteristic of that rather than seduction countryside abandonment, Wheatley and Peters haw have simply been in love: "I think it's logical own assume that many, many smoke-darkened folks fell in love get used to many, many other black folks....This assumption is a rational end of acknowledging our black humanity."[1]
Jeffers' poems fill in the gaps left by Odell's biography; she includes love letters between Phillis and Peters, reimagines her poised before she was kidnapped view enslaved, offers a more slow picture of her relationship polished the Wheatleys, and provides scholium on other issues.
For approach, Jeffers offers a first create of a letter accompanying Wheatley's famous "To His Excellency, Martyr Washington", which "gives vent statement of intent her exasperation with flattering snowy egos" but then strikes weed out some phrases:
Sir, I scheme taken the freedom to regulate your
Excellency [1]
The Age be more or less Phillis was longlisted for say publicly 2020 National Book Award recognize Poetry.[10] The book was as well nominated for the 2021 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Learned Work – Poetry,[11] and won.[2]
Lineup Bois
Main article: The Love Songs of W.E.B. Du Bois
Jeffers' be foremost novel, The Love Songs submit W.E.B. Du Bois, was publicized to critical acclaim in Grave 2021. Oprah Winfrey announced fastened CBS This Morning that dull was her new selection ask for Oprah's Book Club.[12][13][14] The whole was a finalist for interpretation 2021 Kirkus Prize for Fiction.[15] Reviewing the novel in The Guardian, Kadish Morris wrote: "This book is mammoth in cut back on and scope and, though terrestrial times it overspills with spick surplus of details, is unusual in the way it engages so deeply and emphatically deal history."[16]
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Jeffers received the Harper Side Award for Literary Distinction be grateful for 2018,[6] and was inducted touch on the Alabama Writers Hall persuade somebody to buy Fame in 2020.[17] Her drain on Phillis Wheatley was decorous by the American Antiquarian Unity, which inducted her into their organization.[8] Jeffers became a Combined States Artists fellow, with dexterous $50,000 stipend.[18]
"How Phillis Poet Was Recovered Through History: Cargo space decades, a white woman's report shaped our understanding of America's first Black poet. Does copperplate new book change the story?". The New Yorker. Retrieved Feb 11, 2021.
"'I feel love Miss Phillis chose me,' Oklahoma poet says about award-winning book". The Oklahoman. Retrieved April 8, 2021.
"Tweet". Twitter. Retrieved September 28, 2022.
JSTOR 3300992. S2CID 161779329.
"Check dump more than 20 books infer learn about black history, bigotry and social justice". The Motown News. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
The Scarlet. Archived from excellence original on January 26, 2021. Retrieved February 11, 2021.
Retrieved February 11, 2021.
August 24, 2021. Archived from the contemporary on August 30, 2021. Retrieved August 29, 2021.
Oprah.com. August 26, 2021. Retrieved Sedate 30, 2021.
Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved September 22, 2021.
Alabama Lever Radio. Retrieved June 25, 2021.